Amazon is shutting down one of the oldest staples on the internet

It's the end of an era.

Amazon has announced that it will be shutting down Alexa.

No, Amazon isn't shuttering the popular voice assistant found in its home technology products such Echo Dot. The ecommerce giant is closing down Alexa.com, an online service that the vast majority of Amazon customers are likely unaware even existed.

However, for old school internet users, Alexa.com has long been a staple of the world wide web.

Alexa Internet, Inc. was originally founded in 1996 and later acquired by Amazon in 1999 for a quarter of a million dollars in stock.

A screenshot of the top websites in April 2009. Credit: Screenshot/WayBackMachine

The company provided web traffic analysis services based on data it pulled from users who installed Alexa's toolbar for their internet browser. Alexa later swapped out the toolbar for browser extensions and a combination of other methods to determine websites' traffic stats.

However, Alexa's most popular feature was its Global Rank, which listed the most popular websites around the world based on their traffic stats. Alexa's Global Rank was commonly used by media outlets when citing how popular a website had become.

A screenshot of today's top wesbites according to Alexa.com Credit: Screenshot/Amazon

"Twenty-five years ago, we founded Alexa Internet. After two decades of helping you find, reach, and convert your digital audience, we’ve made the difficult decision to retire Alexa.com on May 1, 2022," reads Amazon's end of service notice posted on the Alexa.com website. "Thank you for making us your go-to resource for content research, competitive analysis, keyword research, and so much more."

While Amazon says it will shut down the service in May 2022, the website has already seemingly shuttered for non-subscribers. All of its free features, such as Global Rank, have mostly been removed from the website. Only a login page for paying users to access their data remains, along with the top 50 rank of websites.

It seemed a bit odd, especially in recent years, that Amazon had an extremely popular consumer product named Alexa, one that can be found in millions of households, and they owned the Alexa.com domain name. Yet, they continued to use the URL for its very niche web traffic product.

While Amazon hasn't announced any plans for Alexa.com, it would not be surprising if they began using it for the virtual assistant.