Web 2.0 clichés abound in Yahoo! Oz's new search product

April 10, 2007 8:39 AM

Yahoo! Australia introduces a new search engine that uses OpenSearch and pretty little AJAX tricks to integrate results from Flickr, Wikpedia, YouTube (and so on). You can customize the layout, and even add your own search sources. It’s called Alpha, it’s currently in Beta, and aims to get through the rest of the Greek alphabet by June. (Via podlob.)
posted by Milkman Dan (13 comments total)

These vertical search engines are very cool. I love the concept of really exploring new ways to search. Very nice to be able search wikipedia directly. Now, I just type 'wiki' into google along with any other search I do...
posted by willthethrill at 8:42 AM on April 10, 2007

Willthethrill: On a lot of firefox browsers, you can actually just type:

"wp search_query" in the address bar to search. But, you'll need to spell everything correctly, which is what's nice about using Google.

(Actually, 90% of the time you search on Google for anything wikipedia will show up in the top results)

Still, how often do you need to search wikipedia, a news feed, and flickr?
posted by delmoi at 8:47 AM on April 10, 2007

New ways to search, indeed.

I kept having no luck adding Metafilter to my list of info ources, and it turns out that each site you want to query needs to have OpenSearch RSS set up on the site. Matt, Jessamyn, and other webmasters: here's how.
posted by Milkman Dan at 8:48 AM on April 10, 2007

I can't get one iota of info from them:

Error: Bad Feed We're very sorry.
Gremlins have stolen our ram.
We sure will miss them.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 8:51 AM on April 10, 2007

Delmoi: If you've got a bevy of "what exactly is X?" queries, it would probably be helpful. If you'd only heard about a robot called BigDog, typing in "bigdog robot" would let you see the videos of the robotic mule, alongside the news articles and Wikipedia entry, and you'd have an instant overview.

(Upon re-reading: Oh, is THAT how searching on the internet works?)
posted by Milkman Dan at 8:53 AM on April 10, 2007

Author’s note: The sarcastic remark regarding the functionality of internet searches that concluded my most recent comment was intended as self-mocking snide, not as a delmoi-directed diss. Any offense expressed will only be met by a concise “That’s Not What I Meant.”
posted by Milkman Dan at 9:05 AM on April 10, 2007

I like the no-results haiku.
The web is so large
Almost boundless in its scope
Emphasis: "Almost"
posted by cairnish at 9:43 AM on April 10, 2007

New ways to search, a9.
posted by rschroed at 10:17 AM on April 10, 2007

>It’s called Alpha, it’s currently in Beta, and
I'm gamma try it...
posted by umop-apisdn at 10:35 AM on April 10, 2007

I love how if you block the cookie that it tries to set, it falls flat on it's stupid, Web 2.0'd, ajax'd face.
posted by slater at 10:48 AM on April 10, 2007

Nothing works if you block cookies.
posted by smackfu at 11:10 AM on April 10, 2007

I was under the impression that Yahoo was tyring to move away from Search altogether. I suppose anything they can do to earn back some market share is a step in the right direction. As per MSN, their image search far surpasses that of Googles. Its the only reason I use another search engine.
posted by dcress at 11:55 AM on April 10, 2007

hm, this is probably totally unrelated to the engine itself, but i was rather unimpressed to find an ego-google on my mefi username turn up so much spammy crap that has zero to do with me.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:23 PM on April 10, 2007