Yahoo! Switches Search Engines

Giorgio Baresi writes "As several sources are reporting, Yahoo! in the last hours dumped Google and rolled out a brand new search engine mainly based on Inktomi search technology and Overture sponsored results. On Monday Yahoo! also launched its own crawler, called "Yahoo! Slurp", which replaced former "Inktomi Slurp". Hey, it seems the search engine war has begun!"

Comments

The search engine war has begun?

[MullerMn]

I think you mean, "Begun, the search engine war has.".

Re:The search engine war has begun?

[GuyinVA]

That would be nice. Maybe now they can pull up something relevant to what I searched for in the first place.

How can you speak if you haven't got a brain?

Re:The search engine war has begun?

[paranode]

Does a Star Wars pun really rate that high of a mod?

Star Wars leads to quotes.. quotes lead to puns...

Puns lead to funny mods.

Much to learn, have you.

Re:The search engine war has begun?

[TopShelf]

And not Christopher Lee???

I can just see the Yahoo CEO addressing his legions of web crawlers, proclaiming, "A New Power is rising! It's victory is at hand."

There will be no IPO for Google...

is it just me...

[glen604]

or does a webcrawler named "slurp" sound like something more appropriate for booble.com?

..its own crawler, called "Yahoo! Slurp"..

[burgburgburg]

Well, that has to be the dirtiest sentence I've read on /. this morning.

But the morning is young.

Somewhere, on the deck of the USS Yahoo!

[Noryungi]

Gentlemen! Start your slurping!

You goal is to slurp more than 6,000,000,000 elements of the World Wide Web! It's a fight we cannot afford to lose! Now, go, and may Bob be with you!

Re:Somewhere, on the deck of the USS Yahoo!

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

For great justice, launch every slurp! (?)

I can picture the board meeting

[ProudClod]

CEO: We want a search engine that evokes pride and confidence. Disgruntled Employee: *aside*Let's face it, compared to google it's gonna suck. */aside* How about "Slurp"? CEO: Slurp! I like it!

Some initial results

[Anonymous Coward]

"goat sex jello"
Yahoo: 9070 Google: 7780

"endothelial maximum peanut butter rate"
Yahoo: 142 Google: 116

"bsd is dying"
Yahoo: 63300 Google: 18900

Seems like Google's got some competition!

Re:Some initial results

[Randatola]

"litigious bastards" #1 results:
Yahoo: The SCO Group's official website
Google: Some chintzy site about Google bombing SCO

In fact, site:sco.com does not appear anywhere in Google's 13,700 results for "litigious bastards", which was the whole point of the silly Google bombing.

I'm going to try out Yahoo's new search technology, because I'm tired of every google search I do resulting in the top 50 results all trying to sell me something (usually not even what I searched for). If I was looking to buy something, I'd use Froogle. And increasingly often the top sites are all identical keyword-stuffed pages at different domains-- obviously googlebombed results.

I was using the web when Lycos came out. It blew me away. Then altavista came out, and it blew Lycos away. Then there was an uncertain period, and then Google came out and blew everything else away. Let's set aside our love of Google for a minute, and imagine a search engine that blows Google away. There's no reason why it can't happen. I'm not saying Yahoo! is it; in fact I doubt it. But there's a lot of groupthink here that anything new that's not Google can't be as good or better than Google. There's clearly a lot of room for improvement.

I'm rambling. I'll stop now.

Marketing dept.

[lukewarmfusion]

Imagine the cash shelled out to develop their new name - and they come up with Slurp. Some marketing jackass is sitting in his yacht, drinking - no, *slurping* - a pina colada, and thinking to himself, "I can't believe they paid my for that."

Re:I doubt this is a major problem for Google

[bad-badtz-maru]

I dunno, these new Yahoo/Inktomi results are looking pretty sharp compared to google.

Results

[savagedome]

Searching for Yahoo on Yahoo comes up with about 102 million hits.

Searching for Yahoo on Google comes up with 119 million hits.

Google got depth :)
Yahoo can't even search its own kind!

Re:Results

[lcde]

whats really bad is searching
site:yahoo.com on google yeilds 14,100,000

while
searching site:yahoo.com on yahoo only yeilds 7,580,000


(Side note: yahoo's url is also longer, this will take more time to type in on IE :D)

Re:Didn't....

[NickFitz]

I couldn't find anything about it on the web

Did you try googling for it?

Re:Surely you mean

[DrSkwid]

Reverse Polish Notation, he speaks in.

Slurp...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo posted an FAQ about the crawler, called Yahoo Slurp, and said that it "collects documents from the web to build a searchable index for search services using the Yahoo! search engine."

Surely deserves a patent.

Boy,these search engines sure have low self-esteem

[JBG667]

"Yahoo Sucks"
Yahoo - 7,510 responses
Google - 4,400 responses

"Google Sucks"
Yahoo - 992 responses
Google - 2,430 responses

reverse study

[Anonymous Coward]

Google about "google" results 41,600,000
Yahoo about "google" results 47,000,000

Now who is the winner. Apperently they are both cheering each other on.

Typo in the title.. apologies to The Register..

[Channard]

Surely the title should be.. 'Yahoo! Switches! Search! Engines!'

Need info?

[Docrates]

If you need more information about yahoo, go here.

Re:Wonder if it's Linux boxen?

[caluml]

To answer one of your questions:

Does anyone know?
I would imagine someone does, yes.

A new entrant into the browser war

[victor_the_cleaner]

While all the focus has been on the super powers: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, a little known search engine called Serbia fired the first shot today.

During the press release announcing Yahoogoslavia's new search technology, their CTO, Franics Ferdinand, what hit in the face, and killed, with a pi algorithm.

The pi was launched by a Serbian coder, claiming victory for the common man. This blantant attack has upset the delicate balance of power and the combatants are quickly aligning themselves for a long drawn out trench war.

Switzerland is of course claiming neutrality, and the French are waiting to be occupied.

SCO

[nick_marden]

Yahoo!'s search engine computes the correct 'top link' when you search for litigious bastards. Must be superior technology.

Re:Relevance?

[Dutch_Cap]

"(also, it's plainly obvious that Google can withstand /., but can Yahoo?)"

Well yes, because after all, yahoo is only one of the biggest sites on the internet, with a mere 105 million hits per day

Re:Relevance?

[Fishstick]

the real test?

more evil than satan

miserable failure

and of course...
litigious bastards

seems to work just fine!

Re:Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on... size doesn't matter...

it is all about how you index it.

Re:I doubt this is a major problem for Google

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yahoo" is also meant to mean "moron"

(ie: those yahoos down in Accounting)

So maybe it should be changed to "I'll just ask those yahoos for it"

Re:Relevance?

[randomrandom]

Try searching for: [best search engine]