Yahoo Pitches the 'Next Generation of Search' - Page 2

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Value enough as a stand-alone?

With Icahn preparing for a proxy war, the challenge for Yahoo's leadership will be to convince investors that its turnaround strategy will bump the company's stock price up to the value of Microsoft's offer.

With SearchMonkey, Yahoo feels it is taking an important step in that direction. By delivering more relevant information with its results, its search engine could become a more viable competitor with Google for the lucrative search advertising market.

It is worth noting, however, that those two companies recently concluded a trial arrangement in which Google handled the advertising on a small portion of Yahoo's search queries. Both companies said the experiment was a success, but it is still unclear whether they will pursue a permanent partnership.

Basic Yahoo search engine to remain in place

The underlying algorithm of Yahoo's search engine will not change with the new developer program. Rather, Kumar said that the hope is to tap into the information beneath the surface of Web sites and marshal the collective creativity of the developer community to build a better product from the ground up.

"This is the beginning of a new search engine that is based on structured data," he said, adding that the participating sites and developers will be "shaping the next generation of search."