Yahoo proposes new search approach

Yahoo has announced a radical new strategy to try to erode Google's dominant position in internet search, according to the Financial Times.

The article said that while Yahoo has fallen behind as a challenger to Google, it hopes supporting other search services will allow them to eat into Google's market share and boost its advertising revenues. Google had 59% of the US search market in May, according to the Nielsen research firm, compared with 17 per cent for Yahoo, 13% for Microsoft, 4% for AOL and 2% for Ask.com.

Apparently Yahoo hopes to boost the 1 or 2% held by newer participants by enabling them to gain scale quickly. They will be able to put their own spin on search on top of Yahoo's infrastructure for indexing the web.

Evan Andrews, an analyst with Jupiter Research, told the newspaper, "I think Boss is an ambitious idea, but it will require pretty significant partners and brands to leverage the platform to provide lots of eyeballs and monetise traffic."