CloudSearch and the democratization of information retrieval

Amazon CloudSearch is a new hosted search service, built on top of many cloud-based AWS services, and based on the same technology that powers search on Amazon's retail sites. Because of its ease of configuration and scalability, CloudSearch represents the next step in the democratization of information retrieval. This democratization process, increasing access to search for both end users and potential search providers, has continued over several decades, through technologies like early online metered search services, enterprise search software, web search, and open source search tools. CloudSearch further reduces barriers to entry, allowing a person or organization to basically say "make my content searchable" and have it happen automatically. CloudSearch may also offer an opportunity to overcome the stagnation that has occurred in search user experiences over the past 15 years. When you no longer need to be a search expert to make your content available, you're not stuck with ten blue links. Instead, you can focus on providing the kind of interaction that makes sense for your application and your users. CloudSearch enables a flowering of search applications that need not be tied to the web, and an opportunity to explore new ways of interacting with information retrieval technology.