Yahoo's Build Your Own Search Service

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."

Comments

BOSS?

[larry bagina]

Sounds a lot like FOSS. I bet the confusion is intentional, probably a MS/Y! conspiracy to attack Open Source.

Totally Boss!

[introspekt.i]

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.

Re:Totally Boss!

[menace3society]

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.

So then...

[Bullfish]

MS can stop trying to buy Yahoo and do this for free!!

Inktomi for the masses

[kriston]

It will be really interesting to learn how all the Inktomi technology works and how it well it was integrated with Yahoo.

A little hard to believe

[decavolt]

"...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.

Re:A little hard to believe

[Darkness404]

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.

Re:A little hard to believe

[Darkness404]

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

Re:A little hard to believe

[magarity]

That's because you go to Yahoo's portal page. Yahoo's search page is every bit as clean as Google's, and always has been. Meanwhile, Google's portal page is every bit as busy as Yahoo's.

Goog

[Faux_Pseudo]

Google already has this feature. I wonder what the differances are. For example how come google didn't get a slashdot story when it launched its version?

Re:Goog

[Quixote]

This is more than Google's CSE.

From Google's CSE docs:

• Apply your website's look and feel to the search results page.
• Provide search refinements within results pages to make it easier for searchers to find the information they're looking for.
• Add sites to your search engine's index as you surf the web.
• Invite friends and trusted users to co-edit and contribute to your search engine.
• Make money from your Custom Search Engine by participating in Google's AdSense program.

Yahoo's BOSS allows you to retrieve raw results from their index, and then munge them as you see fit. Google does not allow you to tinker much with the results (just add/exclude sites), except maybe the presentation.

Re:Microsoft probably knew.

[Daimanta]

And I thank Jerry Yang's ego very much for that.

Really Great Strategy

[saterdaies]

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.

Re:Microsoft probably knew.

[_Sprocket_]

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.

And it's going to be called...

[Yvan256]

ChairSearch!

It's a relaunch of an old API with a new TOS

[Animats]

BOSS is not really new. Yahoo already had the Yahoo Search API, which does essentially the same thing. BOSS is essentially the Yahoo Search API with different terms of service. In particular, BOSS will, in future, allow "monetization". BOSS also allows users to intersperse their own search results with Yahoo's and run ads.

Google used to have a SOAP-based API, but they stopped allowing new users in 2006. It didn't force the caller to display ads. There's still a Google search API, but it's tied to their widgets and has restrictive terms of service.

We support both with SiteTruth. Yahoo search API version Google AJAX search version. The interface code is quite different but the end results are similar.

It's not about technology. It's about what you're allowed to do with the data:

• The Yahoo search API terms of service have a rate limit, don't allow you to add ads, but do allow reordering of results.
• The Google AJAX API terms of service don't have a rate limit, restrict presentation to Google's format, and don't allow reordering of results.
• The first rule of the BOSS Terms of Use is that you don't talk about the BOSS terms of use. "You shall not issue a press release or other written public statement regarding this TOU without Yahoo!'s written approval."