The embattled Web giant today released Search BOSS (short for "Build Your Own Search Service"), a service that essentially makes its search infrastructure available as a platform on which others can innovate.

Bill Michels, Yahoo's senior director for its open search platform, made it clear his company expects the move to have a major impact.

"We want to disrupt the market," he told InternetNews.com. "We see a lack of innovation in search experiences on the Web and BOSS is our method of breaking that down and opening up the market to innovation."

It's a bold play by Yahoo and the most recent of a handful of dramatic changes for the company, which recently signed a nonexclusive deal to run ads from archrival Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) next to its search results and share ad revenue. Michels said the BOSS announcement is unrelated to its deal with Google.

In fact, BOSS-powered search services initially won't feature any ads. However, it does plan to eventually launch such a component, sharing ad revenue with developers building on BOSS.

"We have the flexibility to choose when we use Google ads," Michels said. "Anyone that uses BOSS would get pure Yahoo ads."

Ironically, Yahoo is not using BOSS to, well, become the boss of search -- at least not under its own name. Companies and organizations can create new services without a Yahoo logo or any branding that would tie it back to Yahoo.

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"The thinking is it's no longer our product and not necessarily indicative of how we do search," Michels said. He added that Yahoo plans to continue to invest in its own search infrastructure and technology with its standard branding.

Michels said Yahoo is now offering BOSS in beta form as an API (define) for developers. The move builds on Yahoo's recent release of its Search Monkey developer platform which is designed to let site owners and developers enhance search results.

The Me.dium is the message

Yahoo has already been working with several companies that will debut services today as part of the BOSS announcement. One of them, social networking and surfing Me.dium, is using BOSS to launch an early test version of a search engine called Social Search.

Using BOSS, the search engine includes Yahoo's massive search index. It also includes results from Me.dium's own "people search," culled from millions of results from users of its toolbar software, which enables users to share the sites they visit in real time with others.

"Yahoo's given us unbelievable freedom -- this is pretty big for us," said David Mandel, Me.dium's founder and vice president of marketing.

Mandel gave one example of how Social Search results might differ from a standard Google or Yahoo search. A search for "John McCain" using the major search engines would give you the presidential candidate's home page and other sites based on the popularity of content that's most linked to other content -- McCain's Wikipedia page might also pop up as a top result.

But with BOSS, Me.dium is free to display or rank results any way it wants to.

"Our top results would include the top news stories about McCain, the videos and blogs, everything people are looking at now, so the results are very dynamic," Mandel said. Access to Yahoo's search index through BOSS gives Me.dium all the other results it wouldn't normally have the resources to provide -- along with results for far more obscure topics.

"Yahoo's letting us focus on what we do best and also be at parity with the other search players," he said.

Open to all?

Michels said BOSS is available to any company that wants to participate in the program, including competitors.

Hakia, for instance, is a direct Yahoo competitor that boasts a natural language search engine. It's also an early user of BOSS.

Yahoo also said it's partnered with a number of universities, including Carnegie Mellon, M.I.T., Stanford and the Institute of Technology Bombay, as part of an effort to advance search innovation and research.

"Anyone can come in and build products off this," Michels said. "There are no restrictions in how you present results or blend the rankings with your own custom content. Usually, search companies don't let you mess with their rankings. This is unprecedented."