Libraryman

Been wanting to post a list of links for the last couple of days and the A9 Search site was at the top. Then, interestingly enough while in the process of purchasing some M*A*S*H DVDs, Space Ghost DVDs and a new copy of a Technology Training book I get this message:
?Michael Porter, since you’ve been using A9.com recently, virtually everything at Amazon.com is automatically an additional π/2% (1.57%) off for you. Collecting this discount is zero effort on your part. It will be applied automatically at checkout (it will happen whether you use the shopping cart or our 1-Click Shopping?). You don’t need to do anything to get this discount except keep using A9.com as your regular search engine.
We don’t advertise this additional discount that we give in exchange for using A9.com, so if you want your friends to know about it, please tell them. It is probably the only way they’ll find out. All they have to do is use A9.com as their regular search engine. They should make sure they are signed in to A9.com (it should be recognizing them by name) so that we can be certain they get credit for their visit.
While the π/2% discount is a good additional reason to use A9.com it isn’t the best reason. A9.com licenses its web search results from the industry leader Google, and then supplements those results with Amazon’s Search Inside the Book? results. The coolest feature is that A9.com keeps track of your search history for you on the server side. To see how this works, do some A9 searches from your computer at work and then sign in to A9.com from your computer at home.
How can we afford this additional π/2% discount?
Sponsored links revenue -from the small text-based ads on A9.com and Amazon.com search results pages -will help offset costs we incur through the Rewards promotion. With our automatic π/2% discount, we are effectively sharing with you some of the money we collect from sponsored links, i.e. sharing the pi.
Please use A9.com and tell your friends.
Thank you?
Interesting, eh? A novel motivation for some folks to use a specific search tool. A motivator to use the service maybe, but they had better do everything they can to make their services more practical and useful than the next (more established) guy. Google, Yahoo, Ask, etc have been going nuts with new things like this lately too. Gimmicks can actually be a great thing with a great product. For our benefit and yours, good luck with that A9.

Some other search articles I’ve been looking at this week.
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3434971
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4005919.stm
http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/nov03/price.shtml