Yahoo Is Inviting Partners to Build on Its Search Power

/*title: Yahoo正诚邀合作伙伴以争夺搜索控制力*/
Translator: Frank, YN, Snail, Achilles, Bee
Checker: Snail, Bee

SAN FRANCISCO — Unable to beat Google in the Web search business on its own, Yahoo is trying a new approach.

旧金山-Yahoo由于无法独自在网络搜索引擎的商业竞争中击败Google，所以正在谋求新的途径。

Yahoo wants to enlist a small army of search start-ups as allies in the hope that collectively they will be able to stop the Google juggernaut, whose share of Web searches keeps growing.

Yahoo想要招集一小群搜索引擎方面的新起之秀作为合作伙伴，希望以此团队的力量颠覆搜索引擎份额与日俱增的Google的霸主地位。

To do so, on Thursday Yahoo is opening its search technology and powerful data centers to other companies, allowing them to build new or customized search engines without having to make the huge investments needed to develop a search service from scratch.

为此Yahoo在星期四开始向其他公司开放他们的搜索引擎技术和强大的数据中心，允许他们在无需巨额投资的情况下就能创建或定制新的搜索引擎，而这种投资是白手起家开发一种搜索服务所必需的。
Yahoo, in turn, will sell ads on those new search engines; if some grab even small slivers of the search market, Yahoo will share in their success.

作为回报，Yahoo将在这些新的搜索引擎上出售广告；如果谁得到了搜索信息市场哪怕很小的摊位，Yahoo也会分享他们的成功。

Yahoo’s future remains uncertain. Hoping to seize on growing shareholder dissatisfaction, Carl C. Icahn, the activist investor, is trying to wrest control of the company from Yahoo’s board and management team. Microsoft might renew its bid for Yahoo if Mr. Icahn succeeds.

Yahoo的未来仍不明朗。风险投资商Carl C. Icahn想借Yahoo的股东们不满情绪升温的机会试图从Yahoo的董事会和管理层手中夺取公司的控制权。如果Icahn成功了，微软可能会改变对Yahoo的出价。

Yahoo executives said they had high hopes for the new strategy, which they call Boss, or build your own search service.

Yahoo的执行官表示他们对新的经营策略给予很高的期望，并称其策略为BOSS,即“打造你自己的搜索服务”。

“Over the course of years, we want this to be much more than a blip,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, head of research and search strategy at Yahoo. Mr. Raghavan showed a pie chart in which a hypothetical collective market share of the new search engine had grown to be comparable to Yahoo’s own. He joked that the chart was a “pie in the sky” and would not discuss actual market share estimates or timelines.

搜索研究策略组组长Prabhakar Raghavan表示：“接下来的日子里，我们希望实现由策略到执行的转变。”他展示了一个扇形统计图，把一个假定的新生成的搜索引擎集体市场份额与Yahoo目前自己的市场份额作了比较。他开玩笑说这个图表只是一个假设，没有探讨实际市场份额估算值和时限。

Yahoo had 20.6 percent of all searches in the United States in May. Google’s share was 61.8 percent, three times as large.

五月，Yahoo在全美搜索引擎中所占比例为20.6%，而Google占的比例为61.8%，是Yahoo的三倍。

Analysts said Yahoo’s strategy was clever but added that many elements of the plan, like the terms of the business relationships between Yahoo and its partners, had yet to be defined.

分析人士认为Yahoo的策略是明智的，但同时也表示这份计划的许多细节，比如Yahoo与其合作伙伴之间的商业关系条款等还有待进一步明确。

“This is being done as a public-facing move to show that Yahoo has an idea for how to get traction in online search,” said Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner. “The overall concept is very sound. But it is way too early to determine what kind of impact it will have.”

“Yahoo想在在线搜索市场占有一席之地的理念正深入人心，”嘉特纳咨询公司的分析人士Allen Weiner说，“理念总体上很好，但铁定说它会带来何种影响还为时尚早。”

Mr. Weiner said it was unclear how many developers would embrace the idea of building new search services on top of Yahoo’s. As of now, two start-ups, Me.dium and Hakia, have signed up to use Yahoo’s search technology.

Weiner先生表示究竟有多少开发公司愿意在Yahoo的搜索技术上开展新的搜索业务还不清楚。到目前为止，两家新兴企业——Me.dium和Hakia，已同Yahoo达成协议，同意使用Yahoo的搜索技术。

Me.dium offers a service in which users can see what Web sites their friends are visiting. That allows the company to collect information about what sites have “buzz” at any given time, said Kimbal Musk, the company’s chief executive. Me.dium will use that information to rearrange and supplement Yahoo’s search results, creating a service that captures the “social zeitgeist” of the Web, Mr. Musk said.

据Me.dium公司的首席执行官Kimbal Musk透露，Me.dium为用户提供了一项可以让他们看到自己的朋友正在访问的网站的服务。这也便于Me.dium收集信息，了解到何种网站在何时有访问量。Me.dium会应用这些收集到的信息来重组和优化Yahoo的搜索结果，正如Musk先生所说的，“打造紧跟网页上所体现的社会时代新潮的服务”。

A search for “Barack Obama” on Yahoo, for instance, returns a set of news articles, followed by the candidate’s official site and an entry from Wikipedia. On Me.dium, whose search service is still in a test phase, the top results include the candidate’s official site, followed by a popular YouTube video of Senator Obama dancing on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” followed by Obama-themed images for PC desktops.

例如当你输入“barack Obama”（译者注：下届美国总统候选人之一）时，结果是一系列新发表的文章，紧跟的是候选人的官方网站和从Wikipedia进入的方法。但用Me.dium设计的还处在试用阶段的方案，头条结果包括候选人的官方网站，Senator Obama在“The Ellen DeGeneres”跳舞的一段流行的视频，然后是Obama在PC上的主题桌面。

“We think that for a good percentage of searches, we’ll get people to where they want to go a lot faster than regular search engines,” Mr. Musk said. He said it would have been impossible for Me.dium to create a search service on its own.

“为了赢得一个好的命中率，我们将比一般的搜索引擎快地多的让用户搜到他们想要的站点。”Musk说，“当然，由Me.dium独立开发这一搜索引擎是不可能的。”

Yahoo estimates that it would cost $300 million to build a search service from scratch.

Yahoo估计，从零开始建立一个搜索服务将耗资三亿美元。

Google has allowed Web sites to customize its search results, but not nearly to the extent that Yahoo is doing with Boss.

Google虽然已经允许网站客制化其搜索结果，但程度远不及Yahoo正在实施的BOSS战略。

Yahoo executives acknowledged that the new strategy, if successful, could cannibalize Yahoo’s own search business. But they said that if a search start-up became popular, it would probably take more users away from Google than from Yahoo, as Google has a far larger share of the market.

Yahoo主管承认，新战略一旦成功，可能会削减Yahoo本身的搜索业务。但他们认为由于Google有一个大得多的市场份额，所以如果一个新的搜索公司崛起，它将从Google争取到更多用户而非从Yahoo。

“We did a lot of analysis,” said Bill Michels, senior director for Yahoo’s open search platform. “We are comfortable with the risks associated with it.”

“我们做了很多分析，”Yahoo开放搜索平台的高级主管Bill Michels说，“对相关风险我们并没有感到棘手。”