Yahoo Search To Go Open Source… Sort Of
By Anna Johnson on July 11th, 2008Who’s afraid of Google?
Microsoft buys Powerset (and is apparently still interested in buying Yahoo).
And now, in what appears to be another admission that it can’t beat Google on its own, Yahoo has decided to share its search technology and data centers with other companies. Known as “Boss” – or “build your own search service” – the strategy is aimed at letting other companies build on Yahoo’s technology in return for allowing Yahoo to sell advertising on those new search engines.
Yahoo has admitted that the new strategy could cannibalize its own search business, but believes that the initiative is more likely to erode Google’s much larger share of the search market. At least two start-up companies – Me.dium and Hakia – have already signed up to use Yahoo’s search technology.
