• New York Times, Monday, May 8, 2006 10:30 AM

Consumers probably won't notice it when Yahoo turns on Project Panama, its new search advertising software, this summer, but we will. Will it be worth the wait? Two years and tens of millions of dollars later, Yahoo has a new search advertising system it hopes will help its engine become more effective for advertisers than its search rival-in-chief Google, which currently dominates the search advertising market. If all goes well for the Yahoo, Project Panama will mysteriously make ads more relevant and interesting to consumers and should result into more cash for Yahoo--about $600 million. Currently, Google crushes Yahoo on search revenue;one analyst estimates the big G makes 40 percent more per search than Yahoo. Ouch. Update badly needed. Part of the problem, as many of you know, has been the frequent and embarrassing service disruptions that make certain crucial bits of data unavailable. While the New York Times article doesn't mention the tech specs, it does drive home the huge size of the new project. It's taken longer than Yahoo expected to build Project Panama--"We are flying an airplane while rebuilding it," said David Henke, Yahoo's vice president for engineering in the search-advertising group.

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