TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Jeff Jordan argues Amazon is Google’s biggest threat:

In Google’s case today, I am becoming increasingly convinced that their most challenging competitor isn’t another search engine like Yahoo!, Bing, Baidu or Yahoo! Japan. It’s Amazon, which is bringing a completely different take on search—in this case, product search.

Amazon is a vertical search engine focused on helping users find products. The overwhelmingly dominant way to find things on their site is the search box.  Users enter a keyword phrase and are presented with results that match his or her query. The order of the search results is determined by algorithms that seek to optimize relevance and monetization. Sound familiar?

This perspective helps explain the Kindle Fire, too.

(Via Rian van der Merwe.)