Yahoo is looking to tap into the creativity of third-party developers to help its search business stand out in the search advertising market.
It is launching a service called Build Your Own Search or BOSS, that will share its search technology with third party developers. This builds on the recent launch of Yahoo's SearchMonkey developer platform, which opened up the Yahoo search results page to allow site owners and developers to create enhanced search results.
Consequently, any third-party website will be able to build a search engine using Yahoo's search system for indexing information.
In return for sharing its technology, Yahoo will gain the right to display ads alongside the results of any search engine that utilises its technology.
Prabhakar Raghavan, chief strategist for Yahoo Search, said: Today, the search market is generally limited to three major search engines to drive innovation and growth. BOSS opens up the playing field for developers and companies to disrupt the search market, become principals in search, and build new web search experiences that offer more choice for users.
The new initiative is one of several unveiled by Yahoo in recent months to convince shareholders that its future lies as an independent company, not owned by Microsoft.
However, some shareholders are beginning to agitate for a deal with Microsoft. At next month’s AGM it is expected to face calls for its board to step down and be replaced with executives open to a Microsoft deal.
.jpg)
.jpg)