Yahoo debuts 'future of search'

(WIRED) -- Yahoo is looking to one-up Google and its own search partner Bing, offering a new search experience it describes as the "fastest thing you have ever seen."

The new product called Search Direct combines instant search -- showing results as you type -- with instant answers, so that typing in "amzn" instantly shows a full box with stock quotes about Amazon.com. For searches it has no answer to, it shows search links immediately in an easy-to-navigate box above a typical search-results page.

Yahoo, which looked to have abandoned the search game when it outsourced its search backend to Microsoft, says Search Direct -- and its emphasis on user experience -- is the future of search.

"I want you to remember three words: 'answers, not links,'" Shashi Seth, Yahoo's vice president for search told a room of tech reporters in San Francisco as he demo'd the product.

Search Direct is live on search.yahoo.com and other U.S. Yahoo search properties, but not the homepage yet. The same experience will soon come to all search boxes on Yahoo, Seth said, and it will find its way to non-Yahoo properties as well.

The product has "answers" for 15 categories of entities, including movies, professional athletes, music, celebrities, weather info, news, shopping, local and stocks.

The new search builds on Yahoo's attempt to stay relevant in the lucrative search market by focusing on user experience, now that it has farmed out the expensive infrastructure to Microsoft, in exchange for ad-revenue sharing.

"People still come to Yahoo and search on Yahoo," said Yahoo chief product officer Blake Irving।
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/03/24/yahoo.future.wired/index.html