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May 8, 2008

Yahoo’s Answer to Google’s Universal Search is Glue (Coming Soon to America)

Erick Schonfeld

51 comments »

glue.jpg

Sometimes the only way to get new products out the door at a big company like Yahoo is to launch it far away from HQ. That’s what happened with Yahoo Glue, a new way to present search results more visually that Yahoo is experimenting with on its Yahoo India site. Much like Google’s Universal Search that brings in results from images, videos, maps, news, or other sources as appropriate. It is also similar in appearance to Ask since its redesign last summer.

Yahoo Glue only works for certain categories of searches (sports, travel, entertainment, health, stocks, and tech), but it does produce a more satisfying experience than the traditional list of blue links. The only issue is that the results take a little bit longer to load. But humans are visual creatures and we respond better to the visual display of information. Yahoo Glue brings in results in three different panes, both from Yahoo and elsewhere. They can be images, videos, Wikipedia entries, HowStuffWorks entries, sports stats, and news, and results from other sources.

Search for the “Taj Mahal” and you get pictures and videos of the Taj Mahal, and a link to the Wikipedia entry. Search for “Halle Berry” and you get a bio, pics, YouTube videos, news, and results from Yahoo Answers. Search for “soccer” and you get league tables. The traditional link results are still available in the narrow left-hand column, but you almost ignore them.

This is not just a random project in India. Expect to see Yahoo Glue imported to the U.S. sometime this summer, says one industry source.

Combine it with Yahoo’s SearchMonkey project, which allows developers to change the way search results are displayed, and Yahoo Glue starts to get interesting. Yahoo doesn’t have to create the templates for every single search category. Developers can do that and, in the process, make Yahoo Glue a truly sticky app.

(Photo by Will Fuller).

yahoo-glue-taj-small.png

yahoo-glue-halle-small.png

yahoo-glue-small.png

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 10:36 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles, Web 2.0 News & Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. TechCrunch en français » [fr] En bref: Yahoo lance Glue, Facebook fait un grand pas, Le createur de Napster encaisse enfin, Les early adopters sont des utilisateurs de Microsoft

    May 8th, 2008 at 10:59 pm

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  3. TechCrunch Japanese » Yahoo Glueは、Googleのユニバーサル検索対抗（米国では近日公開）

    May 8th, 2008 at 11:51 pm

  4. 想知道未来Google Universal Search的样子？看看Yahoo Glue吧 | SilenceWolf

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:55 am

  5. links for 2008-05-09 « Breyten’s Dev Blog

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  6. Yahoo Search évolue « Embarquement e-media

    May 9th, 2008 at 7:35 am

  7. Saran Scout 10/5/08

    May 9th, 2008 at 10:37 am

  8. Yahoo! Glue vs Google Universal Search | Mikimya, l'Agence de création de contenus et d'interfaces numériques. Les spécialistes en expérience utilisateur.

    May 10th, 2008 at 11:45 pm

  9. IntellimiquE » Archive du blog » Universal Search

    May 11th, 2008 at 6:25 pm

Comments

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  1. Andy Wong

    May 8th, 2008 at 10:47 pm

    Indian in India are innovative, productive and cheap to pay. Chinese in the mainland China are productive and cheap to pay too, they might be innovative but quite often re-invent the wheel. Indian is open to the world, and Chinese in the mainland China are blocked by Information Firewall, they can not access freely Wikipedia and other technical materials even. The largest net population can access the smallest set of the Internet. India, is taking all advantages of the Internet.

  2. Puneet Thapliyal

    May 8th, 2008 at 10:49 pm

    Looks very promising indeed. Innovation in search continues from Yahoo…

  3. Kin Lane

    May 8th, 2008 at 10:52 pm

    Integrated, “Universale” search is the future. Pretty soon we won’t even remember what plain ol text keyword search was.

  4. Philip

    May 8th, 2008 at 11:02 pm

    Just a comment on the speed. Yahoo! India’s sites are generally optimised for users from India, so chances are if you’re connecting from outside India, it will seem a lot slower. I’m connecting from the US right now, so can’t verify this.

  5. Nikhil Narayanan

    May 8th, 2008 at 11:02 pm

    Seems interesting.
    Some search results throwing me Yahoo Images but some gives me flickr
    Why is this so?
    –Nikhil

  6. Michael Campbell

    May 8th, 2008 at 11:12 pm

    Thank you Yahoo for stepping up to the plate. At least finding the plate. I’m so tired of an all Google world. Competition is healthy, it really is… cough. I know you have a cold and can’t find your socks… but get out there and play darn it. ;-)

  7. Johnny

    May 8th, 2008 at 11:19 pm

    Glue is cool.!

  8. Steen

    May 8th, 2008 at 11:23 pm

    This presents perhaps a better user experience and further monetization opportunity however I would expect ad revenue to drastically drop on the near term if this is implemented.

  9. Chetan

    May 8th, 2008 at 11:26 pm

    Something really interesting might be seen in Glue!

  10. anthropocentric

    May 8th, 2008 at 11:33 pm

    Anyone who thinks that compromising speed is an option must be sniffing glue. Speed is everything, as Google has proved a number of times.

    Here’s Marissa Mayer on the subject in 2006:
    http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=3925

  11. JasonH

    May 8th, 2008 at 11:34 pm

    Is this the same as yahoo “oneSearch” the default mobile search? Seems like it, but formatted for the desktop.

    Side note… I still think Yahoo’s best strategy would be to not make the yahoo.com default page a news portal. Take a lesson from google and make it nothing else but a search box and a few links. Save the news portal as an optional homepage, like iGoogle. The time it takes to load just makes me not want to search on Yahoo.

  12. haha

    May 8th, 2008 at 11:38 pm

    yea, lots of innovation from yahoo. too bad ms had this type of search results fully developed 2.5yrs ago.

  13. kayakman

    May 8th, 2008 at 11:58 pm

    this looks cool… cant wait to try it.

  14. Joke Cricket

    May 9th, 2008 at 12:33 am

    Wow..great search engine for Indians..

  15. Glenn

    May 9th, 2008 at 12:40 am

    i want to see the redesign… i love both Google and Yahoo

  16. jackstowe

    May 9th, 2008 at 12:42 am

    Yahoo! is going better and better. You will be glued with this new search tool innovation.

  17. Achal

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:20 am

    Speed from India is pretty good. I searched for many keywords and I didnt find it slow. Though it was not as blazing fast as text results, but it was worth waiting another second or half to get rich search results

  18. Felix Unger

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:30 am

    let me rewrite this article:

    Yahoo’s Answer to *Mahalo* is Glue (Coming Soon to America)

    Sometimes the only way to get new (human powered, not algorithm based)products (which won’t scale) out the door at a big company like Yahoo is to use cheap labour based in India.

  19. Larry

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:35 am

    Sure, it looks promising, but it could have been called “Yahoo! Dog’s Breakfast search”. That’s not a joke.

  20. Scott

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:54 am

    sorry i think it’s sh*te. Way way too busy

  21. Sandeep

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:59 am

    Interesting. It gives results from Last.fm and youtube. Kool. Next step could be to create an API where data from other big players (photobucket, digg, facebook) can be integrated and then displayed via search. Awesome!

  22. Vidar Hokstad

    May 9th, 2008 at 2:25 am

    JasonH: You want search.yahoo.com

    I’m still amazed at how many people don’t know it exists… As for changing the default yahoo page, take note of how much it has been trimmed down already. Expect any further reductions to take a very long time.

    As an ex-Yahoo employee, I remember very well how large percentages of users to various Yahoo! services got there by going to the front page and clicking through, and when you take away the links to other Yahoo services on the current front page, there’s not really that much left they can “safely” trim.

  23. wd

    May 9th, 2008 at 2:29 am

    what: dsf

  24. Andy

    May 9th, 2008 at 2:31 am

    The long thin panels remind me of A9 search.

    To be honest I prefer the discrete format of Universal Search from Google, with the media items inline. So I’m far more interested in SearchMonkey, which will allow similar inline content.

    For panels of info, I’d much prefer to go to Wikipedia directly, than have the information in my search results.

  25. wd

    May 9th, 2008 at 2:39 am

    [link]hi:sorry[\link]

  26. Kevin Allman

    May 9th, 2008 at 3:48 am

    this is pretty decent…but it looks like something google can create in very quickly if they really wanted to

    http://www.blubert.com - the cool stuff in tech

  27. Ciaran

    May 9th, 2008 at 3:49 am

    Meh - not sure about this at all (but I’ve been proved wrong on many occasions). It looks like a messier version of Ask 3D (which has hardly turned their fortunes around, despite a bucket of marketing.

    Once again it seems like Google is doing this stuff better; the way it blends the results in a way that is familiar to the user, but still allows new content to be brought in, just feels better thought out.

    Is this really Jerry’s master-plan?

  28. Zaid

    May 9th, 2008 at 4:09 am

    Oh God! If yahoo’s answer to google is designing a crappier UI I feel bad for them.

    Seriously. We are all pretty ADD as it is. Showing three result panes does not help the cause. Plus, the actual search results pane…I assumed for first few seconds it was the ads.

  29. Mehul Vansdadiya

    May 9th, 2008 at 6:10 am

    This will definitely be a milestone in the search engine history. For those who cry on bandwidth of internet, this will not be a problem in near future. Many people are worried about the interface. Actually it will be very helpful for internet beginners and non English speakers. Anyway they (Yahoo) will surely improve the interface once after launching.

  30. JasonH

    May 9th, 2008 at 7:14 am

    At #22 Vidar, you just made my point. I actually know search.yahoo.com exists, but don’t use it because that is one more word to type in. Granted I could have it bookmarked,but you made the point already that most don’t know it exists. So web search newbies with slow connections are use the slow loading yahoo front page or the fast google frontpage. Which do you think they would stick with?

  31. jc

    May 9th, 2008 at 7:24 am

    If Yahoo allows google to place ads it could also allow MSN to place ads on its pages to avoid anti-trust issues. A few of the defunct search sites like lycos allow for universal search. I still think if Yahoo wants to make profits from search it should seek out partnerships with 411 and YellowPages to connect users who are looking for business information locally to businesses universally.

  32. kishore.j

    May 9th, 2008 at 8:57 am

    really nice search feature from yahoo India. i love it

  33. Billu Gates

    May 9th, 2008 at 9:11 am

    Lots of research is happening in the labs of the global web 2.0 companies who have their labs in India in maybe bangalore, pune , hyderabad or bombay.

    These research projects are getting into the market place now and maybe they will be the foundation of the Web 3.0.

    Three cheers to India.

    Billu Gates

  34. Divyansh sharma

    May 9th, 2008 at 10:03 am

    ah…. classic clustered yahoo2

  35. Kijiji sux

    May 9th, 2008 at 12:47 pm

    Nationalism has cluttered the brains of many. Not innovative (see ASK 3D), not functional, and not helpful.

    Short Y! stock if they roll this out in the US.

  36. phenom

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    Search is the future. Pretty soon we won’t even remember what plain ol text keyword search was.

  37. Mike

    May 9th, 2008 at 3:25 pm

    Wow, this is bad. Horribly unfocused layout. At least Google’s version looks aesthetically aligned. This would drive me away from Yahoo completely.

  38. Todd Levy

    May 9th, 2008 at 5:22 pm

    > this is pretty decent…but it looks like something
    > google can create in very quickly if they really wanted to

    Or something you could create as a “one-man weekend project…”

    http://searchquilt.com/search/?q=Taj+Mahal

    http://searchquilt.com/search/?q=Halle+Berry

    http://searchquilt.com/search/?q=soccer

  39. Anand Rajaraman

    May 9th, 2008 at 6:04 pm

    Actually, comparing Glue to Google Universal Search might be missing the point. This story argues that dYahoo Glue might be bigger than you think:

    http://anand.typepad.com/dataw.....-glue.html

  40. Bhasker

    May 10th, 2008 at 12:45 am

    Its also interesting to note how a relatively less talked about product like kosmix ( http://www.crunchbase.com/company/kosmix ) looks pretty similiar. They’ve even been covered by TC, and funded upto $30mn odd, with the ealery architects of junglee/amazon behind the company, and bezos on the board.

    But they’ve stuck to niche vertical search, started with health and auto when i checked them out a year back. Seems they’ve added a few more verticals including travel, etc ( compare the similiar results for taj mahal http://www.kosmix.com/Travel/taj_mahal-s? and you’ll see what i mean )

    Keep Clicking,
    ~B

  41. Josh

    May 16th, 2008 at 11:12 am

    ‘Search for “Halle Berry” and you get a bio, pics, YouTube videos, news, and results from Yahoo Answers.’

    Sounds like Yahoo is turning into a meta search engine …. I do favor this type of engines over “1 source” engines that give a dogmatic view of the web

  42. Liverpool Credit Card

    June 4th, 2008 at 6:11 pm

    I think yahoo is right in there competing with google. MSN, bye bye.

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