Amazon has joined the search efforts for Steve Fossett after his balloon small plane trip ended in a disappearance somewhere in the Nevada desert last week. This news comes after Steve's friend British Billionaire Sir Richard Branson has reportedly contacted his friends at Google to see if they would join the search efforts of over 6 airplanes and three helicopters.

Now Amazon has enlisted its Mechanical Turk system to search for the pilot. They're using human researchers to complete tasks that cannot be automatically analyzed, such as photo analysis, surveys and audio transcriptions. Amazon is also asking volunteers to look through satellite images and mark any areas that could demand any closer looks. 53,000 locations are currently awaiting further investigations.

Sure, lives are irreplaceable, and money should be of no concern when dealing with the lives of people. But how much money and time can be spent on one person alone? And if this person was someone less known that Steve Fossett would anyone care? Would Amazon and Google be putting all of this time and money towards searching for them?