Yahoo has dumped Google for web searches from its US sites, the California-based company announced on Wednesday. The move is the latest in an increasingly cut-throat race to dominate the search-engine market, which is expected to bring in $2 billion from advertising sales in 2004.
The breakup ends an uneasy alliance between two of the internet鈥檚 biggest players. Yahoo, which initially made its name as a search engine, licensed Google鈥檚 up-and-coming search technology in June 2000 as it expanded into online sales and communications.
But in the last two years Yahoo spent more than $2 billion to acquire internet companies Overture and Inktomi. Overture provides paid-for links which will bring in revenue.
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Yahoo is not disclosing its search algorithm, but in a statement the company says its anti-spam technology will help 鈥渇ilter out irrelevant, redundant, or low-quality URLs and links.鈥� Yahoo will also allow users to add constantly updated headlines and links from certain sites to their personal Yahoo homepages 鈥� following a trend to personalise users鈥� web searches.
These features will allow 鈥淵ahoo to change the game in search鈥�, says Jeff Weiner, a senior vice-president at Yahoo.
Google-like 鈥榗rawler鈥�
But Chris Sherman, an associate editor at the web site Search Engine Watch, says the technology behind both engines is 鈥渇undamentally going to be similar鈥�. Yahoo is likely to use a Google-like 鈥渃rawler鈥� that scans web sites for search terms and then rank the sites based on how many other sites link to them.
鈥淚鈥檓 impressed with what I鈥檝e seen of Yahoo,鈥� Sherman told New 杏吧原创. But he says the company could more clearly identify which sites had paid to be included in the index. Yahoo does disclose a financial gain from its searches, though not on an individual basis, but on a link that reads 鈥淲hat鈥檚 this?鈥�.
The day before Yahoo鈥檚 announcement, Google reported that it had increased the number of web pages it indexed by about a third, to more than 4.28 billion pages.
鈥淲e have decided to put even more energy into our improvements and have turned up the notch on innovation a bit,鈥� Sergey Brin, Google鈥檚 co-founder and technology president, told the Associated Press.
Microsoft, which currently uses Yahoo鈥檚 search technology, is reported to be testing search technology of its own.
In the coming weeks, Yahoo, which is still using Google searches for images, will transfer searches on its international sites to its own technology.
