Wait - isn't Yahoo's search now powered by Bing? The author says that he was at Yahoo search - but what hacking can there be in that department today if you no longer have a search engine?
Yahoo's algorithmic search is powered by Bing. But that's like saying DuckDuckGo can't innovate because Gabriel uses Yahoo, Wikipedia and other APIs to get data.
Microsoft have partnered with Yahoo! to provide the core matches but what we do with those is up to us.
and who's running the adwords-like part of the business? Still Overture? Funny how MSFT does not understand that's where the money comes from, and where improvement is most needed.
Maybe MSFT are focusing on getting the search experience right before worrying about money. That's a very startup-like approach to doing business and probably the best thing they could go given their reputation in the search market.
I don't know many Overture people still left in the Search Marketing division. Over time most of the historical Overture teams were sidelined and all the important work moved to the main offices in and around Sunnyvale.
(I worked for Overture for 1.5 years before the acquisition, and then Yahoo for another 5 years. I left about 2 years ago.)
Both algo and paid results at Yahoo! are still powered by Yahoo!
We have a deal to transition both of them to be powered by Bing. It is still in testing. Algo results _in US_ are planned to transition in the Fall. Other countries will follow after.
Paid results are planned to be transitioned in 2011
