Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Yahoo's Build Your Own Search Service

Posted by kdawson on from the meet-the-new-boss dept.

ruphus13 and other readers alerted us to Yahoo's BOSS, Build your Own Search Service. It gives access to Yahoo's entire databases for Web, image, and news search with no cap on queries per day and no restrictions on mixing Yahoo's search results with others or re-sorting them, and without Yahoo branding visible. From their blog announcement: "As anyone who follows the search industry knows, the barriers to successfully building a high quality, web-scale search engine are incredibly high. Doing so requires hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in engineering, sciences and core infrastructure — from crawling and indexing technology to relevancy and machine learning algorithms, to stuff as mundane as data centers, servers and power. Because competing successfully in web search requires an investment of this scale, new players have effectively been prohibited from delivering credible alternatives to Yahoo! and Google. We believe the BOSS platform will begin to change that."

13 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Totally Boss! by introspekt.i · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So the ultimate plan is to get students and academicians to make their search services for them. Once they're good enough for market, they can purchase the rights to said BOSS search services (or incomplete ones that look very promising...to part out and use in the code base). That's a good idea coming out of Yahoo! Finally some decent press for them.

    1. Re:Totally Boss! by menace3society · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It can do a lot of things, actually. One use, as you've noted, is to serve as what amounts to a source of free R&D.

      But there are a lot of other things that can come out of this, too:

      • People who want more advanced search features (like regex support) can write it themselves instead of pestering Yahoo.
      • Better support for foreign language search.
      • Since a lot of websites still roll their own site search functionality and do it badly, use Yahoo as a replacement.
      • More flexible 'Safe Search' access control.
      • etc...

      I think it's a great idea. It might open them up to some serious copyright challenges, but if it doesn't (or, preferably, if those challenges get tossed aside), it would be great to see all the search portals do something like this.

    2. Re:Totally Boss! by neonmonk · · Score: 2, Insightful

      experts exchange -site:experts-exchange.com

      wow that was hard...

    3. Re:Totally Boss! by JSBiff · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm confused. Didn't Yahoo get their ass handed to them by a search engine that was created at Stanford University by PhD Computer Science students , whose creators only saw significant investment after that was concluded (because they had free access to University resources, like bandwidth, computers, and power)?

    4. Re:Totally Boss! by el+americano · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "People who want more advanced search features (like regex support) can write it themselves"

      I wish that were true, but this does not magically allow queries that their database does not support. What you get, according to TFA is re-rank, combine with other data, and remove Yahoo branding. It also allows news and image searches and unlimited queries. This is exactly like previous APIs, but with a few more freedoms.

      Somebody is buying into the hype.

      --
      Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
  2. A little hard to believe by decavolt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "...from delivering credible alternatives to Yahoo! and Google."

    I find it a little hard to believe that Yahoo, especially in their current state, actually wants to encourage even more competition against themselves. I think the real target here is more competition for Google, not for Yahoo, and Yahoo seems OK with giving away their own tech if it helps knock Google down a few notches.

    1. Re:A little hard to believe by Darkness404 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yet I think what is so funny is Yahoo is what made Google popular in the first place. When I go to Google, I have the A) Google logo B) A search box and C) A bit of navigation. When I go to Yahoo, I have ads, a large Yahoo logo, a page full of useless information, and Flash. Google uses no Flash which is helpful for a Linux user like me, which, although Flash works, it has a terrible CPU leak in the more recent versions.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    2. Re:A little hard to believe by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Which goes to highlight where the companies come from, and what the companies do. Google does search. Yahoo does a lot of other things, of which search is just one component, albeit a major one.

      The same thing though could be said about Google, Google has maps, blogs, a social networking site, 2 video sites, and much more

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    3. Re:A little hard to believe by imaginaryelf · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Most of which do not contribute to their bottom line, if at all. So you put in your frontpage the things that make you money, so google -> search. Yahoo -> search and other stuff.

      If yahoo's frontpage were to be equivalent to ysearch.com, then they would be deliberately taking money away from their other business units which are making them money.

    4. Re:A little hard to believe by CastrTroy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah. I think the trick here is that Google doesn't try to muck up their main entry point displaying everything they support while yahoo does. You can go to search.yahoo.com and get a nice little search screen, very similar to google. But most people don't go there. They go to www.yahoo.com. I think Google was smart in keeping their homepage simple.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  3. Inertia by frodo+from+middle+ea · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have been so used to goolgling for stuff, that I hardly see a point in switching my search engine. 1) Google comes up with relevant results for 99.99% of my needs. 2) Their search page and subsequent results page is very easy to use, has no flashly graphics, the sponsored ads are clearly marked and never really mingle with the actual searches. Not that I am saying yahoo's search is any less in quality, but the inertia for me has set in, and unless google does something stupid, like making the whole website flash/silverlight/java-applet based, Why should I switch ?

    --
    for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
  4. Really Great Strategy by saterdaies · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is one of the smartest moves I've seen Yahoo make. The key is that you are required to run Yahoo ads alongside the search results (when said ads become available).

    So, if I'm creating a search for my website, I can go the Google route, embed an iframe and look amateur or go with Yahoo and look professional and completely integrated.

    Not only that, but there are a lot of niche markets that big players can't go after that add up to a lot. As someone who programs for those type of sites, Yahoo's BOSS is really appealing. Yahoo ups their ad revenue, I get access to world-class internet search.

    It's all about increasing the number of ads served. The more people who choose BOSS, the more ads Yahoo serves and the more money Yahoo makes.

  5. Re:Microsoft probably knew. by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The deal feel through because of Jerry Yang's ego. Taking the deal was the right thing to do for the shareholders and he didn't do it because he let his pride/ego get in the way.

    Or he did it because he knew it was the wrong thing for Yahoo! and the wrong thing for shareholders who are interested in the long view. But hey - this horse has been worked before.