In a move to build partnerships with third-party developers, Yahoo on Thursday introduced a new open Web services platform. Yahoo Search BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) gives outside developers unprecedented access to Yahoo’s search technology, including the ability to re-rank and control the presentation of results.

Yahoo launched BOSS as an API in beta and said it will enable developers and companies to build world-class custom search experiences and disrupt the search industry.

BOSS extends Yahoo’s Open Strategy by giving developers access to its search infrastructure. that builds on the recent launch of Yahoo’s SearchMonkey developer platform, which opened up the Yahoo search-results page to allow site owners and developers to create enhanced search results.

“Today, the search market is generally limited to three major search engines to drive innovation and growth,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, chief strategist for Yahoo Search. “BOSS opens up the playing field for developers and companies to disrupt the search market, become principals

in search and build new Web search experiences that offer more choice for users.”

Yahoo Makes Building Search Economical

Yahoo said BOSS will compose it more economical for companies to build Web-scale search experiences. BOSS will plus generate revenue for Yahoo’s partners. by the next several months, Yahoo plans to introduce a BOSS monetization capability using Yahoo search advertising and potentially other models to create a search revenue stream.

From a design perspective, BOSS lets developers control the presentation and ranking of Web search results as well as unlimited queries per day. Its framework allows developers to blend Yahoo Search results from Web, news and image indexes with any details source from across the Web. by date, the company said other Yahoo Search indexes will become available.

BOSS will offer two options for companies and developers. Immediately, developers can start using the BOSS self-service API and the mashup framework…

Orginal post by Top Tech News