InternetYahoo Re-Launches Search

But will me-too innovation make a market share difference?

Yahoo isn't giving up on search. It is, however, giving up on trying to catch Google by offering users just another set of "ten blue links," Vish Makhijani, general manager of Yahoo! Search told InternetNews.com. To that end, Yahoo today re-launched its search, replete with special features designed to improve the experience and better enable rapid, accurate searching. Chiefly, that will be due to the new Yahoo Search Assist feature and efforts to integrate audio, video and photos into general Web search results. Makhijani characterized Search Assist as a "step beyond" pre-filled search queries; It's a drop-down menu that allows searchers to narrow and broaden their queries by topic and concepts, delivered via an AJAX interface. There's also a new feature called Yahoo! Search Shortcuts, which integrates ratings, reviews, photos, and official websites into a box at the top of a search results page. The new features are supposed to differentiate Yahoo from crowd of search engines that are starting to look all the same. "If you cover up the logo [on a search results page], it's very hard to distinguish ten blue links from ten blue links," Makhijani said. "But from an industry point of view, some branching away from those ten blue links is starting to happen. That's providing opportunities for differentiation." That opportunity is crucial, Makhijani said, because "absent compelling differentiation, [users] don't have a reason to switch search engines... [ Read more on www.internetnews.com ]

InternetYahoo Re-Launches Search

But will me-too innovation make a market share difference?

InternetAdobe eyes real-time collaboration with new services (InfoWorld)

InfoWorld - Adobe is preparing two hosted services that will allow developers to add real-time collaboration capabilities, including VoIP, to RIAs (rich Internet applications). The company demonstrated the services -- code-named Pacifica and CoCoMo -- at its Adobe MAX 2007 user conference in Chicago Tuesday.