I spoke to my friend John last night about these changes at A9. He worked there until a few months ago and now works for Google. Nice timing, John!

A9 just ripped out all of the features that actually made it unique and worth using. The A9 instant reward program was the only reason I used it occasionally. What a bummer. There is room for another search company to focus on product search and interesting services. Amazon has the firepower (and the product database) to play well in this space but it sounds like internal strife and key departures are sinking this ship...