Yahoo! Video Search
December 16, 2004 9:27 AM   Subscribe

 
Wow. That looks so much like a Google interface that either this was leaked unintentionally before it could be changed, or that it's on purpose and Yahoo has a sudden desire to be sued.
posted by Vaska at 9:33 AM on December 16, 2004


Ripping of the Google interface is the new thing. There may be a lot of lawsuits.
posted by xmutex at 9:37 AM on December 16, 2004


Lawsuits?

What, did Google copyright the center tag? Or perhaps minimalism?
posted by catachresoid at 9:48 AM on December 16, 2004


Can't copyright an idea.
posted by tranquileye at 9:49 AM on December 16, 2004


it's Yahoogle! good luck with those lawsuits ... spare interface with a big long search box and one big button below.
posted by mrgrimm at 9:49 AM on December 16, 2004


Google has this. You just need to add filetype:.avi (et cetera) to your tag.
posted by rafter at 9:51 AM on December 16, 2004


Our Video Search BETA was unable to find any video files that match your query video. We’re working hard to find all the video on the web.

How impressive.
posted by scottq at 10:01 AM on December 16, 2004


... In the meantime, Yahoo! Search found 248,000,000 Web results for the similar term video video

thanks.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:03 AM on December 16, 2004


Tranquileye : Yes, you can. Fiction books are ideas and are copyrighted. Other ideas are patented.

Catachresoid : Both are search engines. Google was clearly the first to use that kind of design by several years. No judge will look at the centered design, the bar, the logo above the park, and the little pastel box and not tell Yahoo it has a nice big fine to pay. Imagine if Mercedes started building cars that looked very close to BMW's, one could argue both are cars and you cannot trademark the look, but in fact you can.
posted by Vaska at 10:05 AM on December 16, 2004


scottq, the search presumably works by looking at the filename and the textual context surrounding the link. One would imagine that the word "video" would appear in nearly every context in which a video link exists, so it's kind of a useless indexing item -- they probably filter it out.

Besides, what's your "use case?" It's like typing "picture" into image search, or "page" into regular search. You are perhaps a generalist?
posted by TonyRobots at 10:08 AM on December 16, 2004


TonyRobots: Searching google for things like "image" and "picture" does, indeed, return some of the most random material imaginable. It provides me with entertainment every once in a while, and I was hoping Yahoo's would do the same.

How cool would it be to be the first result for a search like this, anyway?
posted by scottq at 10:14 AM on December 16, 2004


I'm having fun with it.
posted by adampsyche at 10:16 AM on December 16, 2004


I dunno, I'm pretty satisfied with my search results.
posted by LimePi at 10:16 AM on December 16, 2004


Tranquileye : Yes, you can. Fiction books are ideas and are copyrighted.

Books are expressions of ideas, and the same idea can (and has) been expressed in different ways. This is why you can have more than one brand of Yellow Pages - even though they have the same numbers in them and they both use thin yellow paper.

And that search engine design has been used plenty of times before now, and I don't recall Google suing anyone else that did it. Which either means that they can't, or that they won't.


As far as the video search itself... I like it. Google should make one.
posted by Jart at 10:19 AM on December 16, 2004


The Internet is for porn.

Thank you Yahoo!
posted by mosch at 10:20 AM on December 16, 2004


Yahoo's search engine has been quite a bit better than google for some time now. Rumour has it that google's index is larger, but yahoo's algorithm seems to be much more effective. The video search is likely based off the multimedia search engine that altavista developed a few years ago. (yahoo owns altavista via the overture deal). That said, competition in this market is good. Google's index has been bombed all to hell and they have not been able to fix things without destroying their search results.
posted by jba at 10:20 AM on December 16, 2004


Our Video Search BETA was unable to find any video files that match your query bukkake. We’re working hard to find all the video on the web.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 10:21 AM on December 16, 2004


Back in the day, that is what the Yahoo page looked like [except default gray background before the bgcolor tag became all the rage] and a few major categories below the search box. Those were the days.
posted by birdherder at 10:21 AM on December 16, 2004


Would Google sue Yahoo, or the other way around?
posted by gwint at 10:22 AM on December 16, 2004


Whoa, you just beat me, birdherder.
posted by gwint at 10:22 AM on December 16, 2004


I'd like this, but it won't let me turn SafeSearch OFF.
posted by armoured-ant at 10:23 AM on December 16, 2004


scottq:
Yeah, I realized when I tried the links in the first post that those queries are actually kind of fun. FWIW, "movie" works.
posted by TonyRobots at 10:27 AM on December 16, 2004


Scottq, check out the Random Personal Picture Finder.
posted by borkingchikapa at 10:31 AM on December 16, 2004


Mr. Mean Bucket: turn SafeSearch off.

Results 1 - 20 of about 999 for bukkake. Search took 0.07 seconds.
posted by mosch at 10:36 AM on December 16, 2004


Google was clearly the first to use that kind of design by several years.

Even if that was true, the design is far too simple and obvious to web designers. It's just an image, an input box and lines of text, centered. One might as well try to copyright the haiku format.
posted by catachresoid at 11:09 AM on December 16, 2004


Google was clearly the first to use that kind of design by several years.

Not to pile on, but yahoo, altavista and hotbot/inktomi all had this interface at some point before google existed.
posted by jba at 11:20 AM on December 16, 2004


As far as I can tell, the algorithm just searches filenames (or, more likely, gives vastly higher weight to those items, at the expense of context in the HTML page, or the content of the movie). It's useless.

Imagine how many movies there are with Dan Rather in them that don't have Dan Rather in the filename, because the namer thought that the story title (or the date, or the channel, or anything at all) was more important. I may very well, for the purpose of my query, disagree.

posted by zpousman at 11:35 AM on December 16, 2004


Yahoo is so getting sued for ripping off Google's design!
posted by jefgodesky at 1:13 PM on December 16, 2004


Hmm.. it seems to find the same results as AltaVista and AlltheWeb (although Yahoo! claims to find a bit more). If that's the case, then why is this beta? What does it actually do that is new?
posted by Harry at 1:48 PM on December 16, 2004


seriously, wheres the porn.
posted by Kifer85 at 3:21 PM on December 16, 2004


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