A9's OpenSearch - RSS-Based Search Results

INFO SCIENCE: How fucking cool would it be if a large amount of websites gave you search results in a standardized XML format, rather then a non-standards based HTML format? Fucking cool, that's how cool. This would allow an awesome amount of integration between local applications and web applications, between existing search engines and black-box websites. Awesome.

Well, A9 (Amazon's search engine) is out to do just that. OpenSearch is a new XML schema, backward compatible with RSS, used for returning search results to a client.

From the site:

Many sites today return search results as an tightly integrated part of the website itself. Unfortunately, those search results can't be easily reused or made available elsewhere, as they are usually wrapped in HTML and don't follow any one convention. OpenSearch offers an alternative: an open format that will enable those search results to be displayed anywhere, anytime. Rather than introduce yet another proprietary or closed protocol, OpenSearch is a straightforward and backward-compatible extension of RSS 2.0, the widely adopted XML-based format for content syndication.

Up until now I thought Jeff Bezos' half-mad face leering towards the search biz was creepy, but if they keep the inovation coming, more power to them.