Should Google Be Afraid of Yahoo Search?

Yahoo's new Search Direct is supposed to give real-time answers to a query as the user is typing it and long before hitting the "Enter" key. Sound familiar? Maybe a little too much like Google Instant Search?

Well, it pretty much is like Google's Instant Search. But Yahoo says it's different. It's based on answers, not on links.

"I want you to remember three words: 'answers, not links,'" Shashi Seth, Yahoo's vice president for search told tech reporters in San Francisco as he demonstrated the product. That same sentiment was echoed elsewhere.

"They're very different products. We're focused on providing answers, not links. Google Instant is focused on providing more links, faster. Not answers," Yahoo said, according to TechCrunch.

The answers are actually 15 categories including movies, professional athletes, music, celebrities, weather info, news, shopping, local and stocks. Yahoo is also ad-revenue sharing with Microsoft, who's handling all the heavy lifting and infrastructure for the new search. Yahoo also emphasized that it created instant search first, not Google -- despite Google launching it six months earlier -- because it's really hard to take Yahoo seriously because apparently the tech company isn't competent enough to launch its own creation without help from a chief rival.

It's interesting to see if Yahoo is launching this product to be a suitor to Facebook's latest innovation, it's new search bar. So far, Microsoft's Bing is in the lead, but Yahoo may hope to share in its new partner's success.

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