• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, October 11, 2005

This week, one month after Google launched a blog search engine, Yahoo!'s search engine for news has started returning blog entries alongside news stories.

The move, which comes just days after America Online purchased the blog company Weblogs for an estimated $25 million, leaves no doubt that large media companies have taken an interest in the blogosphere.

Why are blogs suddenly seen as valuable? One reason surely is the growth of ad networks that are placing ads on the more trafficked blogs. Another is that mainstream media usually doesn't delve into smaller stories--those that only a limited number of readers care about--the way blogs do. Or, as Joff Redfern, a Yahoo! product director, told the Associated Press: "The traditional media doesn't have the time or resources to cover all the stories going on."

For the most part, blog search has been developed, and dominated, by niche companies like Technorati, IceRocket and Bloglines (acquired by IAC's AskJeeves in February).

Whether these companies will remain leaders in the blog search space, or whether Yahoo! and/or Google prove more popular remains unknown. In many ways, this question parallels that of whether popular bloggers themselves will remain small and independent, or whether they'll be swallowed whole by large media companies.