• by February 18, 2004

Yahoo! launched its new search capability early today EST. The move, which Yahoo! had been working toward for several months, effectively eliminates the use of Google as its default search provider.

Yahoo! isn't alone in wanting its own search technology. MSN has been working on its own thing for months, sending its web spiders out and accumulating terms.

Yahoo!'s search gambit cobbles together the search technologies of Overture Services, which it acquired last year, technology from Inktomi, AltaVista, Fast Search, and Transfer.

Yahoo!'s Yahoo Slurp web crawler is out rooting around the Web looking for documents which form the basis of a searchable index for search services. Once the new service is complete, Yahoo! says it will enable half of all online searches in the U.S.

Where does all of this leave Google? After all, Yahoo! was a big customer. Google on Tuesday said it added one billion pages to its web index which now totals 4.28 billion pages as it prepares for increased competition from Yahoo! and MSN. The company's IPO is probably just around the corner.