Yahoo acquires Inquisitor: Oh no?

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Yahoo!, Search, web 2.0

Yahoo acquires Inquisitor: Oh no?

by Danny Mendez May 9th 2008

The bright developer behind Inquisitor has announced today that Yahoo! has acquired the rights to his program, which searches for and suggests results as you type. It's very similar to Spotlight except that it searches the Internet instead of your Mac's HDDs.

We worry that Yahoo! might ruin Inquisitor by preventing it from working with other search engines, but the developer insists he will remain the lead mind behind the program. He will not be working with Yahoo! as their official employee, so at least he's keeping his creative freedom. Though we don't know if the company will allow him to apply that freedom to the program since it's technically Yahoo's now.

Our suggestion, if you use Inquisitor, is to turn off the search for updates feature, which may lead you to accidentally update the program to a crippled version. If you're happy with the way Inquisitor works, there's no point in risking an update. Otherwise, don't agree to an update without researching the changes first. We wouldn't want you to restrict Safari's search bar to Yahoo. No one deserves that.

Tags: engine, google, inquisitor, search, yahoo

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Big John said 9:19PM on 5-09-2008

Hopefully this bodes well for Inq. Apparently they've already removed the affiliate links (according to TechCrunch) and switched the default search to Yahoo (durr, but users can still change it). So for the immediate future, good things.

David Watanabe said 11:10PM on 5-09-2008

The first release of Inquisitor under Yahoo's watch is already out there in the form of Inquisitor 3.1. I think the policies in place in 3.1 - retaining the full feature set and retaining the user's right to choose a competitor to Yahoo - speak to Yahoo's intentions to preserve the spirit of this project.

Quite simply, releasing a "crippled" version that restricts user choice is in no one's interests. Yahoo benefits when there are happy customers using Inquisitor, and a "crippled" version would be contrary to this.

Thanks,
David Watanabe

Josh said 11:24PM on 5-09-2008

Yahoo! would be dumb to force users to use their search engine. The app is beautifully designed and is pretty much the only way to add the Firefox search capabilities (or at least a portion of them) to Safari. If Yahoo! were to "cripple" the app, they would get a bad rep and the app would probably die. The default engine in Safari is Google. They just changed that to Yahoo! for any user who installs Inquisitor. That could be a few thousand more searches a month. Don't tell me they would risk that ad money.

Not to mention that ruining an app would likely make their chances of having another successful indie app buyout in the future next to impossible. You know how the tech community (Referring to the readers of Weblogs and Gawker, for the most part with that) stick together and hate when companies ruin good software. Yahoo! would be screwed if they crippled Inquisitor, methinks.

skerns1 said 11:45PM on 5-09-2008

Yahoo has already bought software and screwed it up beyond comprehension. MusicMatch Jukebox was a singularly great product until Yahoo bought them and screwed it up like a middle child in a dysfunctional family.

xcaine said 1:15AM on 5-10-2008

And then the world ended.....

I realize that the writer of this blog post may like the app. So I am going to disregard the biast undertone, and the S**t.

Yahoo has bought a good product, and may well use it to promote its own product. Very few times do one hear that Opear or Firefox are using bad company policy to add the search panel, with an engine predefiened. The one they make money on.

By all means, turn off update to tell Yahoo to keep theyre hands off. But also, turn off the spin of personal oppinion into a tech news story.

Stick to facts in hand, warn of possible outcomes.

mxxcon said 4:06AM on 5-10-2008

i never heard of this app before and as a matter of fact i don't even use macs on daily basis
but man, Danny Mendez that wrote this post, sure is paranoid and trigger happy.
i haven't seen any evidence that yahoo would 'cripple' this software. i would at least wait for such a version to be released before reverting back to the better one and disabling updates.

Dudu P said 4:06PM on 5-10-2008

Very well put. Never saw a paranoid post as this here on DSquad. Disable updates? It's the worst advice a tech "editor" could give to anyone. Better uninstall it, so ypu won't get your security compromised, specially when it comes to browser addons.

And people, this is Yahoo, not MS, okay?

Insomnic said 7:05PM on 5-10-2008

Since the original software already had embedded affiliate links, sponsored keyword results, and all sorts of undocumentated "features" - I think Yahoo taking it over would actually be a good thing.

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