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IIRC, search is expensive. It takes a lot of capital to get the indices and user-data which makes you competitive. Yahoo wanted to make money off of their (numerous) other properties as opposed to running down the rabbit hole of search.

>In what POSSIBLE WAY does this "benefit" everyone? There are too few big competitors in search already.

I don't understand this space well enough to have a meaningful opinion, but I think some people feel that the only way Google will have any competition is if Microsoft and Yahoo team up. If that's true, I guess it could be a good thing.

Also, this means one less search API available. Yahoo BOSS with unlimited searches was a godsent, but first the capped it, and now MS will eventually make it disappear.

It may not be good news, but it's news and something people here should know. How it gets to the top of the front page with 2 votes... no idea. Slow day?

New ranking algoritm. See pg's comments in the experiment- thread.