The Google Channel

July 17, 2008

In what amounts to a brilliant maneuver to upstage Microsoft's ethereal cloud technology and Google's search market dominance, Yahoo released this week a "Build Your Own Search Engine" (BOSS) initiative to open up its search technology and Yahoo's search infrastructure to the Web. Yahoo's initiative is a no-holds-barred approach to beat Google's search appliances and Web tools and Microsoft Live.

Like a chessmaster, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has made few comments recently that are spellbinding, at least to .Net developers. Ballmer stated that development approaches will need to change so that new cloud-centric programs can work over the Internet. But in reality, MSN and Live have not helped Microsoft gain the momentum needed to compete with Google. Today, Cloud amounts to nothing more than a brew of exotic techno-jargon and grandiose plans.

Conversely, Yahoo's approach is lean and mean and as if BOSS wasn't enough, Yahoo also released a Mashup framework for the search technology. The framework uses JSON, XML and RSS/RDF to manipulate data assets across sites. The framework includes UI templates to combine Web site data and search results into pages. The API uses SQL-like functions to combine the data.

Yahoo also made a BOSS Custom program available to businesses that are interested in extending Web applications with BOSS. BOSS Custom can certainly empower the channel by providing it with the means to build the next generation of search and Mashup applications. VARs with innovative Mashup concepts can contact the Yahoo Custom group for assistance and guidance.

Yahoo has made BOSS relatively simple to use. The BOSS API comes with filtering, works within XML structures, and supports multiple languages. Like the real Yahoo search engine, BOSS can provide alternate spelling information, and even search images. Developers can create custom searches using simple reserved characters in the queries.

Yahoo's BOSS might just be what the channel needs to build the next generation of SaaS and Mashup applications. One thing's for sure: Google and Microsoft are about to have a tougher time competing now that Yahoo's search technologies are wide open.