Yahoo Opens Panama Gates With API Program

yahoosearchmarketing_logo.jpgYahoo today announced the Yahoo Search Marketing Commercial API Program that will provide businesses and developers free and open access to the Panama search marketing application program interfaces (APIs).

The program will give advertisers, developers, ad agencies and technology providers the ability to build upon Yahoo’s core search marketing technologies to enhance their existing business offerings or create brand new search marketing tools and applications.

Susan Decker, head of Yahoo!’s Advertiser & Publisher Group said that opening up Panama was all about gaining market share: “By providing open access to our technology, we are making a clear investment in our advertising partners, creating new opportunities for developers, and taking a key step toward achieving our vision to build the industry’s leading advertising and publishing ecosystem.”

Opening up Panama to free API access can be either of two things: inspired thinking or desperation. Given the huge lead time it took to deliver Panama in the first place this feels like a decision that is the former, after all nothing at Yahoo moves quickly enough to act from a position of desperation. Developers will likely pull apart the new program in the coming days and strictly from that viewpoint the offer will definitely be welcomed in the industry and could potentially throw down a stronger challenge in the quest to topple Google’s dominant Adwords platform.