Amazon.com Knows, Predicts Shopping Habits

Amazon.com Inc. has one potentially big advantage over its rival online retailers: It knows things about you that you may not know yourself.

Though plenty of companies have detailed systems for tracking customer habits, critics and boosters alike say Amazon is the trailblazer, having collected information longer and used it more proactively. It even received a patent recently on technology aimed at tracking information about the people for whom its customers buy gifts.

Amazon sees such data-gathering as the best way to keep customers happy and loyal, a relationship-building technique that analysts consider potentially crucial to besting other online competitors.

But some privacy advocates believe Amazon is getting dangerously close to becoming Big Brother with your credit card number.It has built ever-more sophisticated tools to recommend more purchases, direct your searches toward products it thinks you're most likely to want, or even stop the forgetful among us from buying the same book we purchased five years ago.

More recently, the Seattle-based virtual retailer has launched a Web search engine, called A9, that can remember everything you've ever searched for - and the site reserves the right to share that information with its retailing arm.

Amazon also funds a Web site called 43 Things.com. It seeks to link people with similar goals, such as getting out of debt.Technology that can accurately anticipate a customer's greatest desires is going to be crucial in the growing competition with Internet-based upstarts and traditional retailers moving online.

A9 ranked 41st in popularity among search engines in February, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings, attracting only a fraction of visitors to Google or Yahoo.

A9 has no current plans to link customers' Web searches with their Amazon shopping habits, even though data from both sites are stored using the same customer log-in.

Amazon's backing of 43 Things potentially gives it an opening into social networking. At the site, people list personal goals and find out who else shares their ambitions.

Many companies, including Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc., also are investing in technology that seeks to build communities, and Garrity said Amazon has a clear interest in cultivating that same feeling around its sales site.

But for now, it's unclear how 43 Things might eventually relate to Amazon's grander plans