It’s bold, it’s radical, it’s drastic and yet it can just be Google Custom Search Engine in a Yahoo environment.
Yahoo has just launched the Yahoo! Search BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) platform which would allow developers and companies to create their own web search engine using Yahoo’s search infrastructure and technology. Yahoo is touting their Search APIs as a free-for-all, unrestricted platform which users can fully utilize to implement their own search engines.
With Yahoo BOSS you can pretty much do many things including re-ranking search results, presenting search results in any form that users want, mashup search results with other data sources, access to web, news and image search and unlimited number of queries per day.
Now here’s the fun part. Asking itself what’s in the BOSS for Yahoo? Yahoo’s own answer was:
“…we do see new revenue streams from BOSS. In the coming months, we’ll be launching a monetization platform for BOSS that will enable Yahoo! to expand its ad network and enable BOSS partners to jointly participate in the compelling economics of search.”
Clearly, BOSS is but another ploy from Yahoo to save its Search product while at the same time exploring other avenues for generating revenue and possibly salvage what is left of its existence pending the outcome of the coming Yahoo Shareholders’ meetings. But if Yahoo BOSS manages to make grounds for Yahoo Search, hopefully it won’t get affected by whatever the outcome of the August Yahoo shareholders’ meeting will be. We hate to see a good effort put into waste.
And what’s in it for us users? Yahoo says BOSS offers up more choice, different search experiences, vertical specialization and many other things. But to put it simply, Yahoo BOSS offers up an alternative for Google Custom Search Engine and Google’s Enterprise Search products.
