• Cnet News.com, Thursday, July 10, 2008 11:45 AM

Yahoo is beginning a public beta test of a customizable search engine for third parties today. Called BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service), the service allows anyone with an independent Web site to build a search box whose results can be tweaked and displayed in any manner chosen by the customer.

Cnet says that at its core, BOSS enables others' search innovation by using Yahoo search as platform to build on. But Yahoo also shares in the profits from the results. As report author Stephen Shankland says, "It's also the most significant example to date of Yahoo Open Strategy, the company's effort to expose its own technology for outside developers in an effort to become a more indispensable part of the Internet."

The BOSS application programming interface is actually free to use, but innovators who succeed are required to show search ads and then share in the revenue. "We fully expect it to expand the footprint of Yahoo search advertising on the Web," said Prabhakar Raghavan, chief strategist for Yahoo Search. "There is no payment of any kind we expect from partners, but we do say in the terms of service up front that over time we will require them as they build and grow out to use our search advertising."

Read the whole story at Cnet News.com »