Should Yahoo open up its web search index?

[sonink]

Even though initiatives like EC2, S3, wikia and nutch are lowering the barrier for the next wave of innovation on search - building and maintaining an internet wide index is still a huge engineering initiative.

The only player which comes close to google is yahoo. If yahoo opens up its index like wikia it could set the stage for the next wave of innovation in search. Through a use based pricing model like amazon it might also make business sense for yahoo (lets face it, yahoo search isnt really going anywhere yet) and just might also help yahoo in getting its mojo back.

[fauigerzigerk]

I don't know how good yahoo search actually is because I don't use it, but I agree with you about the strategy and business model.

I'm much more comfortable with building applications on top of infrastructures I pay for instead of being held hostage to the odd loyalties and uncertainties that come with ad supported services.

I may want to be yahoo's customer but I don't want to trick my own customers into somehow watching yahoo provided ads or rely on some other indirect means of helping them make money.

Amazon does the right thing. I hope they succeed.

[immad]

Is there actually a good way for someone to open up a web search index even if they wanted to? I know wikia is doing it but I didn't really investigate what that meant. Seems quite challenging.

[tocomment]

I really thought I once heard about the A9 search engine opening access to its index. I can't find it now though.

[nickb → tocomment]

Alexa opened its search index: http://websearch.alexa.com/welcome.html They too are owned by Amazon.

Also, look into this: http://www.opensearch.org/Home It's A9's search spec.

[sonink → tocomment]

A9 is open, though afaik its not good (read big,exhaustive etc.) enough to provide an adequate platform to build something on. Amazon, it seems had their google strategy worked out EC2-S3-A9 though A9 is the weak link which yahoo search can fill.