Yahoo Inc. found a new way of increasing its revenues and also boosting its market share in the competition against the other major players by releasing its search technology to all third-party developers interested in building their own search engines. The product, called BOSS, is considered to be one of the company’s best initiatives for reaching its goals and it is expected to be received with great enthusiasm.

The plan is to allow the interested parties to fully access the company’s search technology, with all of its algorithms and infrastructure in sight, thus ensuring the developers’ control over the presentation of the search results and also their ranking.

In order to benefit from all these features and information, Yahoo’s partners will have to save some room on their Web pages for Yahoo search ads and also share the revenues registered by their activities.

The strategy, looking to secure Yahoo’s position on the market, is expected to attract many partners interested in developing a new search engine or upgrading an existing one, as at this point there is a general trend of creating search engines for several market niches, in addition to the potential found in social networks and e-commerce. Such Web sites are looking for a service that will ensure an exhaustive and rapid search option for their users without the necessity of leaving their pages.

"They will need some significant partners to step up to the plate and leverage the BOSS platform and monetize the traffic in order to really chip away at Google's increasing market share," said Evan Andrews, analyst at Jupiter Research, as quoted by CNN. In other words, in order to turn the initiative into a successful business venture, Yahoo will have to team up with partners which register a significant Internet traffic.

So far, the two major partners signed up for the deal are semantic search start-up Hakia and Medium Social Search, but Yahoo’s officials are confident that many more partnerships will be announced over the next few months.

Yahoo’s certainty relies on the fact that the general costs revolving around the development process of a search engine from the ground up reach the $300 million bar, and by offering its algorithms and detailed infrastructure, the company provides a much cheaper head start.

"If you have an idea for search and a particular audience for a search experience, you can enter the marketplace without the upfront cost of entry," said Prabhakar Raghavan, chief strategist for Yahoo's search unit, according to CNN.

A similar service, but on a much lower scale, is offered by Google, which allows Web sites to customize its search results, based on what they think it’s more relevant for their users. Yahoo planned to completely shadow Google’s offer, offering its platform with an "unprecedented level of access."

Many believe that the strategy is indeed good, but its true results will only show in the long run, as the process of explaining the service, fully understanding its principles, the development process, its implementation, advertising campaigns, exposure and revenue sharing will demand many months of hard work.