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Yahoo! Research Labs

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the i'm-available-to-research-mp3-and-pr0n dept.

glinden writes "Yahoo! issued a press release today announcing their creation of Yahoo! Research Labs. Although there's not much there yet, it's clearly targeting Google and Google Labs. The battle between MSN, Yahoo, and Google in the "Year of Search" is heating up. And it's still only January."

8 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Yahoo? Invent? by stevesliva · · Score: 4, Interesting
    When was the last time Yahoo actually invented something, as opposed to licensing, acquiring or copying it?

    I'm serious-- I'd just like to know if Yahoo has any record of invention.

    --
    Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
    1. Re:Yahoo? Invent? by BoldAC · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Although I love google, I do not think it is fair to smack yahoo around in that matter.

      They were the first large portal... and we have all heard the rumors that google also is going that route. Likewise, google is establishing a mail service... something that yahoo has been doing fairly well for quite a while.

      Yahoo has weathered the dotcom bust pretty well. The 5-year trend is looking up and up despite the recent poor economy.

      Yahoo was a pioneer. Yahoo is surviving.

      Give'm a break.

      AC

  2. It should only make sense. by W32.Klez.A · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Search Engines and portals are our internet starting points; we can't just magically pull information out of our asses. When you're fighting to become that starting point, you're fight much the same battle as news stations do. And we know how fiesty journalists are.

  3. Using heuristics in searches by pubjames · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There's been an ongoing project going for years to build a massive heuristics database (I can't remember the damn name of it now, something like Cync). The heuristics are rules about the world, "truths" if you like, for instance, "water is wet", "sugar is sweet", etc). I would love to see what would happen when you made a search engine which used this massive heuristics database. Even better, let the search engine derive further truths from the pages it searches.

    1. Re:Using heuristics in searches by Realistic_Dragon · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Not so.

      A heuristic is an estimate of the distance to your goal that you can use to evaluate which node in the seach space to expand next.

      Your truths about the world are sentences that exist in the knowlage base.

      There are some really good notes on search on the MIT Open Course Ware website here.

      --
      Beep beep.
  4. Really, it's research.overture.com by greenhide · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Go to http://labs.yahoo.com
    Click on the "Research", then the "Open Source Search", and then the "Staff" tab.

    Notice the URL now says:
    http://research.overture.com/staff.xml

    Now, I'm not sure whether the two sites, research.overture.com and labs.yahoo.com were launched at the same time. There's no Netcraft record for research.overture.com (at least, there wasn't when I last checked it), so I couldn't get an uptime or anything of that nature.

    But considering that the URL changes halfway through while you're browsing through the site, it leaves me to believe this was a fast hatchet job of getting something, anything out of the door to compete with Google, now that Yahoo is severing its ties with the search engine.

    --
    Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
    1. Re:Really, it's research.overture.com by xyzzy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The site specifically says (somewhere) that Yahoo labs is the re-launch of Overture labs (Overture being a company they bought last year? the year before?

  5. It won't be hard to beat Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The only thing Google has going for it is the page ranking mechanism. If you take the time to look through Google Labs, you will see that there is very little stuff there that is actually useful. Fun, yes. Very useful to a very small minority of people, sometimes. But very little Google does actually generates revenue whereas Yahoo! has a well-established online supra-portal that generates revenue through a wide range of method, from banner ads to pay services.

    Once Yahoo! starts producing useful products from their research in Yahoo! labs, they will show that not only is Google Labs a complete waste of time and money (Google's money that is) but it does not generate revenue to support its existence.