Yahoo is inviting search startups to use its technology to develop new or customized search engines in a new strategy it calls “Build your Own Search Service” (BOSS).
This means that startups and other firms will be able to build new search engines without the need for the large investments that a company would need to build such a service by themselves.
In return for the use of its data and technology, Yahoo will sell advertising on these new search engines, hoping to create another source of income for the company.
Yahoo is hoping that these new search engines will collectively be able to carve out a significant share of the market.
Yahoo has estimated that startups would require investment of $300m to create search technologies from scratch, so this move will make it possible for smaller companies to enter the market and, Yahoo hopes, take some search market share from Google.
According to Prabhakar Raghavan of Yahoo Search:
“We want to disrupt the search market by removing that entry barrier and make room for more players and more ideas.”
Raghavan hopes that, over time, Google’s search share will fall below 50% while its own share, with the help of BOSS, will double.
