Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. Our pal Jeremy pinged me today to let me know that Yahoo is launching the “Yahoo! Search Blog”. OK, I won’t sue (for now…).
From the first entry:
As Qi Lu, head of our engineering team likes to say, “search is like rocket science for the masses”. It’s no wonder then that our search team has grown the ranks of our PhDs 10 fold during the last two years….
… The massively scalable infrastructure those world class engineers have built enables us to build applications that we couldn’t even conceive of a few years ago….
…Be sure to check back here for news about new product introductions, updates and exclusive betas.
In addition, this blog is designed to provide a window into what our team is thinking and doing, in their own words (and maybe some guest bloggers as well).
Above all else we hope this blog enables you to share our excitement for the search industry and what the future holds.
For now, the site has comments wide open. Way to go!
Jeremy also has background on his site here including a FAQ. Highlights:
Q: Is this just going to turn into a lame PR blog?
A: I don’t expect that to happen. PR does not own the blog. And it’d be a wasted opportunity if it was just another PR outlet.
Q: Will you link to competitor’s sites or those you don’t agree with?
A: I hope so. I’ve tried to impress upon the folks involved that running a weblog is about openness and that it’s a two-way street. Bloggers can often smell PR influence a mile away.
Q: So PR’s not involved?
A: Of course they are. Someone has to keep an eye on the wannabe bloggers. They’re not going to be re-writing all the posts, if that’s what you’re worried about. They know that blogs are not press releases, and hopefully this will help them better understand this brave new world.
John its seems like Jeff’s let you have the algo space (for now,) unless that crawler has not picked up their own blog yet?
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=searchblog&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t&n=20&fl=0&x=wrt
Or maybe it
If you are considering legal action, then I’d tighten up your trademark on Searchblog w/ a sprinkling of TMs wherever the Searchblog is found.
I’m sort of a plebian that uses yahoo as my home page. What can I say but that it works for me as a general nexus from which I can then consult paid services from my favorites for more in depth stuff.
Today I just noted and tried the RSS feeds module. I can see headlines of your blog up in the yahoo format. Also the wsj, nyt bbc etc.
Very nice addition in terms of “stickyness” I think. Sense I tend to return to my home page after every forray outword, this service makes it that much more likely I’ll continue to do so.
Its pretty clean.
I’ve been thinking of moving my email to personally hosted site (if only for a more professional sort of “address) but Yahoo also responded by giving so much storage and I sort of like the notion (perhaps erroneous?) that they’ve got the most up to date virus filters looking at the mail?