Interesting moves by Yahoo! to crowdsource (definition) search. This from the announcement on the site:

So what is BOSS?
BOSS is a new, open platform that offers programmatic access to the entire Yahoo! Search index via an API. BOSS allows developers to take advantage of Yahoo!’s production search infrastructure and technology, combine that with their own unique assets, and create their own search experiences. While search APIs have been available for some time, BOSS removes many of the usage restrictions that have prevented other companies from using them to build innovative new search engines.

Here’s a quick summary of what’s available today:

* Ability to re-rank and blend results — BOSS partners can re-rank search results as they see fit and blend Yahoo!’s results with proprietary and other web content in a single search experience
* Total flexibility on presentation — Freedom to present search results using any user interface paradigm, without Yahoo! branding or attribution requirements
* BOSS Mashup Framework — We’re releasing a Python library and UI templates that allow developers to easily mashup BOSS search results with other public data sources
* Web, news and image search — At launch, developers will have access to web, news and image search and we’ll be adding more verticals soon
* Unlimited queries — There are no rate limits on the number of queries per day

Given the supremacy of Google, and the company’s woes this is probably not that revolutionary…. but still, a great move.

Technorati Tags: crowdsourcing, search, yahoo