Alexa Web Search Platform Enters Beta

The Alexa Web Search Platform is now accepting applications from potential beta testers.

The Alexa Web Search Platform allows you to write and run code that runs on a server complex hosted and run by Alexa.

To use this service, you write code which calls the Search Platform API. Your code is responsible for processing a single document (e.g. a web page) at a time. You then use the Search Platform’s GUI to define the types of documents that you would like to process, and then you run your code against this collection. When the results are ready, you can store them on an Alexa server, share them with other users, download them, or publish them as a web service. You can use this system to create your own customized search engine.

Pricing is $1 per CPU hour, $1 per gigabyte of storage, $1 for each gigabyte of data uploaded, and $1 for each 50 GB of data processed. Yes, everything costs just a buck.

Although we just rolled out the beta program last night, people are already talking about it. Here’s a sample of what we have seen:

• John Battelle says that “Every so often an idea comes along that has the potential to change the game.”

• Nyle (The Fencing Geek) says “This has really surprised me. It offers uncountable opportunities to any entrepeneur out there with the know-how to create anything imaginable. This is amazing, and can be really cheap too. That is almost to good to be true, but it is since it has already been launched.”

• Susan Mernit really sums up what a lot of people are thinking (and saying) when she says “Wow. Wow. Wow.”

That’s the spirit! We look forward to seeing the cool and creative ways that developers put this new service into use.

— Jeff;