Today, Alexa opened up their full data warehouse of information to anyone who cares to pay for it. For a fairly small fee, you can now utilize their spiders and processing power in whatever creative ways you can think to use it.
Did Alexa want to "democratize data search" as its CEO claimed? Will this cause other engines to commercialize their spiders? Does this mean that anyone can now make their own search engines?
No, no, and no. Let me explain.
Did Alexa want to "democratize data search" as its CEO claimed?
Open Source democratizes processes. Charging for a service is, well, a way to make money. Alexa hasn't been part of the search conversation for quite some time. Now they will be, at least for the remainder of this week. This is a way for Alexa to try to make themselves a relevant part of the search world again.
They are not going to make money in creating their own pay-per-click model. That's too time consuming for an engine with little market share to really make money at. When it comes down to it, this way an innovative way to offer a service they could charge for.
Will this cause other engines to commercialize their spiders?
No, unless this Alexa program is extremely successful. I would just be happy if the other engines beef up their APIs as a result.
Does this mean that anyone can now make their own search engines?
I'm seeing this speculation the most. Over the next few months, we'll see some novel tools come out of Alexa's Web Search Platform. But ultimately it will be too expensive to use for novel purposes. Yes, Musipedia may allow you to whistle a search query, but ultimately that is only useful as a curiosity.
Unless you can find a way to derive actionable data for your company/product, it won't be worth the cost. When the buzz settles down, it will be used by people looking for specific things. It will allow business to dig into web data in new ways to find new niches. Or as Seth Godin said, find needles in data haystacks.
Think along the lines of Lexis-Nexus. A storehouse of great information, but because it is fee-based, it becomes useful only to those that will balance ROI against the cost-of-use.
