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Yahoo Debuts Search APIs

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tue Mar 01, 2005 09:20 AM
from the stepping-up-the-search-race dept.
The Internet
Dotnaught writes "With its planned introduction on Tuesday of new search APIs and a developer network, Yahoo aims to tap the creativity of the open source community. As the current issue of Wired points out, "Yahoo makes more money and has more patents, services and users than Google." Will nurturing a developer community have any impact on Yahoo's competitive position against Google and Microsoft?"
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  • Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01 2005, @09:23AM (#11812000)

    Yahoo makes more money and has more patents...

    Yeah, they sure do know how to get on open-source developers' good sides, don't they...

          • Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)

            by GeckoX (259575)
            Schemas aren't intended to be universal.
            They are intended to support defining the structure of data for a given problem domain.

            Yahoo is using schemas exactly as intended.

  • Uses of API (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nsasch (827844) on Tuesday March 01 2005, @09:24AM (#11812009)
    I kept a blog for a while that used some Google API to get some statistics. I never found a need for anything near accuracy in the results. I think the results that API bring, won't require a preference of one search engine versus another. If Google API is already being used, unless there are needed features, not many people will probably switch over.
    • The API isnt only used for casual statistics. I imagine its used for 'related links' type of stuff in applications, or mapping links around the web etc.

      When the results are all that an API has to offer the end client, surely the quality and accuracy of such results is a factor. In fact, if there are no difference in features, surely the accuracy of the results would *be* the deciding factor. Its not just about getting people to switch, but also people that arent currently using either.

      There were plenty of

  • More users ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Choron (88276) on Tuesday March 01 2005, @09:24AM (#11812010)
    I'm surprised Yahoo has a larger user base than Google. All the people I talk to have given up using Yahoo and use Google all the time, including me.
    As for this API, that's a nice move but too late in my opinion, unless they have some serious advantage compared to Google's but some reason I doubt it.
    • All the people I talk to have given up using Yahoo and use Google all the time, including me.

      I'm betting that's because all the people you talk to are reasonably savvy in this area (like yourself), and thus do not represent a typical cross-section of the population.

      Yahoo has a much larger following among less-tech-savvy folks...it seems to occupy the area between Google and AOL (in terms of users, not services offered).

    • Re:More users ? (Score:5, Informative)

      by krgallagher (743575) on Tuesday March 01 2005, @09:38AM (#11812109) Homepage
      "I'm surprised Yahoo has a larger user base than Google. All the people I talk to have given up using Yahoo and use Google all the time, including me."

      While that is true for most searches, I still use them for mail, maps, and directions. I see a lot of people who use yahoo. Yahoo has been around a long time and they are well known by non-tech savvy people. My seventy-five year old mother is a good example of this. When her computer was installed, MSN was her start page. It still is and she uses it for her searching. I've thought of changing it for her, but it is what she is used to and she is happy with it.

      "As for this API, that's a nice move but too late in my opinion, unless they have some serious advantage compared to Google's but some reason I doubt it."

      Well according to the article:
      "What Yahoo is offering, Walther contends, is much broader than what's offered by the competition. In a literal sense, that's true: Each API provides developers with access to 5,000 queries per day per API, five times more than the limits placed on users of the Google Web API. "We don't just have a Web search API," he explains. "We have Web, local, news video, image, and spelling, among others." And, he says, YSDN is about more than APIs; it's about the development community."

      That is a lot of features, and the higher limit is cool too. I would bet that Google matches or exceeds them in the near future though.

    • Re:More users ? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Laurentiu (830504)
      I do believe their user base numbers are biased. Back when Yahoo was "the thing" (they even had free POP3 on their mail service, I thought that was SO COOL), everyone and their dog had e-mail accounts on Yahoo. As in "more than one" account. Not only for multiple identities, but also for overcoming the limit in storage.

      Besides, having a "large user base" has nothing to do with the quality of developers you are able to attract. AOL has a large user base, how many /.ers would even consider doing development
    • I suspect that it is because people play Yahoo! Games for hours, are a member of a Yahoo! Group, get quotes from Yahoo! Finance, etc... Yahoo offers many more services besides searching.

  • Higher limit (Score:5, Interesting)

    by whitelines (715819) on Tuesday March 01 2005, @09:30AM (#11812043) Homepage
    The web search limit is 5,000. Hopefully this will push google to increase theirs.
    http://developer.yahoo.net/web/V1/webSearch.html [yahoo.net]

    • Re:Higher limit (Score:3, Informative)

      by endx7 (706884)
      Not only is the limit in general higher, but it's based on the "caller" IP instead of the developer account.

    • Re:Higher limit (Score:3, Interesting)

      by fiftyfly (516990)
      I certainly hope so. I've toyed with the google API for a number of things but the one 'toy' that gets smacked around a lot is a related: links [edey.org] spider. A trivial idea that everyone and their dog did when the API was new. The problem is that since every URI is unique, and the googlebot became rather stupid in the middle of jan, I've been getting 3-4000 requests for (basically) the same bloody page every day. The googlebot isn't smart enough, apparently, to see it's GETting the same page with different parame
  • I for one love what google has recently done by integrating their search functionality with their new maps, and I can see the potential for incredibly useful websites using API's like this. Yahoo needs to have a good product here if they have any hope of regaining users in the search engine category. On a related note, I am surprised that Microsoft didn't release something thing similar with the re-launch of their improved search engine. Might a release be coming soon?

  • Nutch (Score:5, Informative)

    by reality-bytes (119275) on Tuesday March 01 2005, @09:37AM (#11812108) Homepage
    There is already a fairly scalable complete FOSS search-engine called Nutch [nutch.org] which can (in theory) scale from an 'in website' search engine to a full-blown google-style search site.

    I wonder if Yahoo are offering as much source access and simmilar licencing terms to this? (It appears from the articles that the APIs are purely for interaction with the Yahoo site).

      • Re:Nutch (Score:2, Interesting)

        by reality-bytes (119275)

        Scalable... you keep using that word. I do not think that it means what you think it means.

        When referring to Nutch, I mean scalable from single processor systems (as would typically run single website searches) to multiple processor (clustered) systems for running full web-search sites.

        What were you thinking I was meaning?

        If the reference to Java implies non-scalability, Sun would tell you otherwise but I (personally) am giving no warranties either way. ;-)

  • 12 year head start (Score:3, Insightful)

    by whoda (569082) on Tuesday March 01 2005, @09:39AM (#11812111) Homepage
    "Will nurturing a developer community have any impact on Yahoo's competitive position against Google and Microsoft?"

    Too bad Yahoo didn't try this 10-12 years ago, before Google existed, and while Microsoft was still claiming the internet was a fad.
    It might have even worked then, it doens't have much chance now, the others will just copy whatever Yahoo does that hppens to work.
    • 12 years ago, there was no Yahoo (and, depending on definition, no web to speak of, so an interface to web searches and categories would have been a funny thing, that's for sure). You don't start and build a user base by providing a rich API. You start by providing a web site...

  • I've got a real big problem... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by blackhedd (412389) on Tuesday March 01 2005, @09:40AM (#11812120)
    Why on earth would any intelligent, well-motivated and talented hacker want to work for Yahoo/Google/IBM/Sun/whoever WITHOUT getting a salary from them? All of these companies that are talking about tapping the capabilities and intelligence of the "community" must think we have no intelligence at all!
    It's the same thing with open-sourcing Solaris. Anybody who is talented and enthusiastic enough to make serious contributions to a major search engine or operating system should be doing it to benefit the whole community, not just to make some major corporation even richer.
    We already know about the open alternatives to Solaris. Where is the open and free alternative to Yahoo? I'll contribute time and money to it!
    • Why on earth would any intelligent, well-motivated and talented hacker want to work for Yahoo/Google/IBM/Sun/whoever WITHOUT getting a salary from them?

      Because there are some programmers, like me, who code because it is a hobby and do code regardless of being paid. The challenge of producing good code is often enough reward. Making money from a hobby is a happy bonus.

    • Re:I've got a real big problem... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gorbachev (512743) on Tuesday March 01 2005, @11:47AM (#11813257) Homepage
      If I want to use one of these APIs to create something cool for my own website or my own education and entertainment, should I ask Yahoo/Google for money? Wake up.

  • Yahoo and Python (Score:2, Interesting)

    by szlevente (705483)
    It's interesting that Google, with a search engine mainly written in Pyton, does not offer examples in Python for their API, as Yahoo does. Just Java and .NET. Yahoo on the other side doesn't have .NET programming examples...however, it rides on the popularity of the other languages. Is Yahoo at war with Microsoft for censoring .NET? I'm sure there are lots of .NET experts at Yahoo...
    • Google is written in Python?? That's news to me. I'd say its more likely they use C & C++ for most of their stuff.

    • Re:Yahoo and Python (Score:3, Informative)

      by treerex (743007)

      Google's search engine is not written in Python. They write a lot of tools and supplemental applications in Python, but the code is decidedly not in an interpreted language, no matter how studly.

      It is interesting, however, that they do not include samples in Python but do include .NET and Java. But think about it: I'm sure their target developer is one who is integrating this into an application. Also note that the Google API is SOAP based, and perhaps at the time they released the SDK originally the Pyth

  • All REST, no SOAP. Bravo!

    developer.yahoo.net/faq/

  • Exclusive! Inside look into Yahoo's future! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Shoten (260439) on Tuesday March 01 2005, @10:02AM (#11812294)
    We've gained exclusive access to the future of Yahoo, and are proud to give you the first ever look into the brilliant things being developed even now, as we speak, by this cutting-edge portal search engine! All the details right here! [google.com]

  • See Y! search API in action (Score:3, Informative)

    by btbytes (625362) on Tuesday March 01 2005, @10:16AM (#11812428) Homepage
    This guy has already built a prototype Image search tool [swaroopch.info] using the Y! API.
  • This is why competition is good! I always like trying out new things, and the competition between Yahoo! and Google seems to be giving rise to some new toys for me to play with. So I'll definitely be taking a look at the Yahoo! Search APIs. One thing I love about the release of APIs like this is that it allows you to build the site/tools that you want. So if you hate Yahoo!'s homepage, etc.., this is a chance to build something better. And everyone wins!

  • quantity & quality (Score:3, Funny)

    by sootman (158191) on Tuesday March 01 2005, @11:05AM (#11812872) Homepage Journal
    "Yahoo makes more money and has more patents, services and users than Google."

    Yeah, all Google has is better search results. :-)
  • ...you grant to Yahoo! [yahoo.net] all rights to use and incorporate such contents in the Yahoo! APIs or any other Yahoo! product or service without compensation to you and without further recourse by you.

    What a load of bollocks.

  • This is cool... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eries (71365) <slashdot-eric@@@sneakemail...com> on Tuesday March 01 2005, @01:41PM (#11814487) Homepage
    if you're looking to try it out, want to come help port gvcard (http://gvcard.sf.net/ [sf.net]) to use Yahoo Local as well as Google Local?

    • Re:Doubt (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MikeDX (560598)
      I would imagine yahoo has the bigger userbase (registered). I know 10x more people with yahoo addresses than gmail addresses and thats only within my so called nerdy friends. Add non-nerdy people such as family and even by conducting a local poll, I would guess yahoo outnumbers google membership by at least 5:1. Depends who they are counting and whos figures they are using. You can prove anything with fancy charts and ratios.

    • Re:Doubt (Score:4, Insightful)

      by KenBot_314 (744719) on Tuesday March 01 2005, @09:32AM (#11812060)
      Yahoo is not just a search engine. I know lots of people that automatically think of sites like maps.yahoo.com, or autos.yahoo.com, or finance.yahoo.com, or anything_that_I_need_to_do_online.yahoo.com instead of other services... Yahoo is still strong in a lot of fields.
      • Yeah, I'm in an bike club that uses yahoo for it's membership mailing list-- it's apparently one of the appeals of the club, even the the S/N ratio is pretty low most of the time. For a long time I automatically sorted the list to trash, but other people apparently join just for the list.

        I also use yahoo for domains (I have a small number and it was convenient way back when competitive registrars were just coming into existence), but am in the process of switching because their customer service isn't very

    • Re:Doubt (Score:2, Interesting)

      by telecsan (170227)
      You underestimate the power of mass numbers of users with Yahoo! Mail accounts. Yes, among the tech-savvy group, Google usage is dominant. However, Yahoo still has longevity and familiarity on its side, and there are many less savvy users for whom Google offers no 'significant' benefit to make it worth the switch.

      • Re:Doubt (Score:3, Insightful)

        by sapped (208174)
        You underestimate the power of mass numbers of users with Yahoo! Mail accounts. Yes, among the tech-savvy group, Google usage is dominant. However, Yahoo still has...

        That's the whole point. API's are aimed at the tech-savvy group.

    • Re:Yahoo (Score:2, Interesting)

      by nsasch (827844)
      and probably the only reason Google has a simple home page is the same reason it started that way, the authors didn't know how to do HTML. Just be glad we have the Google Search button, that wasn't there at first, 'Enter' was the only way to search.

    • Re:Yahoo (Score:5, Informative)

      by shird (566377) on Tuesday March 01 2005, @09:48AM (#11812182) Homepage Journal
      You should be comparing the http://search.yahoo.com/ site instead. It is pretty much identical to google.

    • Re:Yahoo (Score:3, Informative)

      by AstroDrabb (534369)
      Not only that, but Yahoo still favors IE for a lot of their content. I switched all my searches to Google and switched from Yahoo Mail to GMail because of that. For example, Yahoo! Mail has a feature that lets you do some rich text entry instead of plain text. However it only works in IE 5.5+. Mozilla/Firefox support rich text editing, so why leave out those browsers? There are plenty of cross-browser rich text editors out there, even an Open Source cross-browser richtext editor called FCKeditor [fckeditor.net]. It w
    • I use Yahoo for e-mail because I think their service is better than Hotmail. Some features on Yahoo Mail are quite neat and useful (to me), the agenda for example. Google and MSN does not offer that, AFAIK.
      • Ummm... no. Most people I know use google. Also, as I install firefox to more and more friends computers, google is becoming their default search engine because that's the firefox default is.
      • Google is a search engine. Yahoo has become much more of a portal site with additional services.

        Their webmail is good, their personals are good, their financial tracking is good, their news stories are interesting. I use it often just to check the market, read comics, catch up on the latest Paris Hilton scandal, etc... Of course, if I actually want to find anything or do anything useful I use Google.

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