Yahoo cleans things up with the Alpha search engine

Filed under: Design, Internet, Web services, Google, Yahoo!

Yahoo cleans things up with the Alpha search engine

by Chris Gilmer Apr 5th 2007

Yahoo is fighting hard in these search engine wars, and seems to be quite frequently releasing new and interesting goodies for web users. This new entry into the market is a fresh looking search tool called Alpha.

Yahoo Alpha takes a clean approach to searching, and closely compares to Google's Searchmash. Searchmash provides users clean results, with associated image, blog, video, and wikipedia results. The new Yahoo Alpha gives users results for Flickr photos, YouTube videos, News search, Wikipedia entries, and also gives users the ability to see sponsored listings if they choose, all in a nice contrast to Yahoo's busy homepage.

The cleaner the search application the better. The more that clutters the space, the more users get distracted and frustrated with the whole searching experience. Yahoo is on the move with this; now let's see who wins the battle for the new search landscape. What do DLS readers prefer, the new Yahoo Alpha, or Google's Searchmash?

Tags: alpha, google, search, searchmash, yahoo

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Tim said 9:08AM on 4-05-2007

I am a big Yahoo! Fan boy and checked and I say go Alpha!

Jeff said 12:11PM on 4-05-2007

Hmmm...

Alpha Beta? LOL

Looks nice. I too am a Yahoo fan. :)

Chris Gilmer said 8:52AM on 4-06-2007

Mysterius - i thought i was seeing things at first when i saw the YouTube video search in Yahoo!

After all... they do have their video search they could have tossed in at http://video.search.yahoo.com/

Shayne said 11:35AM on 4-06-2007

I am a BIG google fan, although I like Yahoo Alpha better. It just looks nice.

Mysterius said 12:17PM on 4-06-2007

@Jeff: Alpha Beta -> Alpha Gamma -> Beta Alpha -> Beta Beta (or Beta^2) -> Beta Gamma -> Gamma ... ;)

I prefer Searchmash

By the way, did you notice that Yahoo Alpha has YouTube as a search option? Is that just strange, or sorta sad?

And since when did "Yahoo!" become "Yahoo!7" (as it's seen in the search options)?

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

View more Time Wasters