Yahoo BOSS To Survive Microsoft Deal In Some Form; Details Still Hazy
08 Jan 2010 // 14 comments // Internet Development
After months of silence, Yahoo’s BOSS team is opening up to frustrated third party developers about the future of the powerful search platform. A few hours ago, Yahoo’s Ashim Chhabra left a post on the BOSS group forum, offering an explanation for why it has taken so long for Yahoo to relay information to developers, and giving them some idea of BOSS’s fate. The good news? BOSS will continue to live on in some form, but it’s unclear exactly how things will be changing and which services will be powered by Microsoft technology — and there may be fees involved. That uncertainly will probably leave some developers on edge, but at least they know the project isn’t being scrapped entirely.
Chhabra’s post was clearly prompted by the actions of some frustrated BOSS developers, who grew tired of being left in the dark and approached the Department of Justice to talk about how BOSS will be impacted by the Yahoo/Microsoft search deal. The DOJ heard their complaints, scheduling a conference call with them for next week. Chhabra’s post may help placate them for the time being. We’ve included his full post below:
Folks,
Thank you for your feedback. We understand your frustration. This process has been long for all of us due to the complex nature of our agreement with Microsoft, and we appreciate your patience.
Under this agreement, Yahoo! is permitted to continue offering the BOSS web service, with search results that would integrate Yahoo! services and content with algorithmic results provided by Microsoft. As always, our intention is to provide a BOSS offering as long as it makes business and economic sense to do so. We are still examining what the BOSS offering will consist of, with some services powered by Microsoft, unique content that Yahoo! currently provides, and the potential for additional Yahoo! content in the future.
Prior to the announcement of the Yahoo!-Microsoft search agreement, we’d already shared our intention to explore a fee-based structure for BOSS. We continue to explore an appropriate fee structure or other revenue model as we work through the future of BOSS.
As you know, we must receive regulatory clearance before actual implementation of the search deal with Microsoft can occur. Only then can we finalize the future shape of BOSS. Of course, we will provide additional clarity and certainty when we can.
Thanks for your attention!
Yahoo! BOSS team
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
View full post on TechCrunch
Tags: Agreement, all, ashim, Boss, Chhabra, Content, Deal, Details, economic sense, Form, Future, group forum, Hazy, Information, Microsoft, microsoft search, microsoft technology, party developers, post, proxy, Search, search deal, Some, still, Survive, Tegra, Yahoo, yahoo content, yahoo services
This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 8:45 am and is filed under Internet Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
We’ll see if it will pull through
I don’t think use Yahoo’s BOSS
A good site for them to open up there frustrations and just Vent would be… http://www.ventnation.com !!
“Microsoft offers a robust API for Bing. They can make this problem go away if they remove some of the TOS restrictions that prohibit search mashups, allow white labeling, provide transition documentation for BOSS developers, and offer free service to startups with a reasonable fee structure for mid-size partners.” EXACTLY!!!
So much bullsh*t hedging. Why don’t they just yes or no? Any time someone answers with more than 1 or 2 sentences, they’ve done nothing to placate anyone. What he said was “we may continue BOSS, but maybe we won’t, we’ll see.” thanks for nothing.
I really like building web applications with yahoo boss…
Hello everyone,
We are working on a “intelligent search service as a platform” accessible through API (and through a Web interface, at http://www.mnemoo.com). As a little startup, the problem is that adding resources (mainly servers and bandwidth, workforce) depends on revenues… building this infrastructure does not easily attract VCs investments due to high risk that competing with search giants implies. It’s a closed loop.
Wow! That’s quite a bold move by BOSS developers and absolutely warranted. Yahoo’s failure to speak up for these developers and soon-to-be business partners (Yahoo plans to charge for the API) brought this on.
The back-end costs of creating a large-scale search engine are prohibitive so services like BOSS are really the only way small start-ups can enter the general search space without funding. This doesn’t just affect unfunded startups; Daylife, Hakia, Middlespot, OneRiot, TechCrunch Search and hundreds of other mid-size sites leverage BOSS.
Microsoft offers a robust API for Bing. They can make this problem go away if they remove some of the TOS restrictions that prohibit search mashups, allow white labeling, provide transition documentation for BOSS developers, and offer free service to startups with a reasonable fee structure for mid-size partners.
don’t think to use it…
This is the reason why I do n’t trust these closedsource tech companies
Now.. No Money.. No Boss
yah!!!
[...] Yahoo BOSS To Survive Microsoft Deal In Some Form; Details Still Hazy January 7th, 2010 at 11:53 pm [...]
Abobe flash 10.1 .apk – Yahoo boss captcha – Flash 10.1 apk – Yahoo BOSS To Survive Microsoft Deal In Some Form; Details Still Hazy | 7touch Group Blog…
CAMPINGAZ CG 19431…