Ah, yes. It's another yawner -- Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) launched its desktop search application today in beta, as has become the customary way of search function launches. This word is no surprise whatsoever, given the historical progression of the search wars -- not to mention, Yahoo! had already made the promise.
Major rival Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) launched its own desktop search product quite some time ago. And then several other search players followed suit, including Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) MSN service and Ask Jeeves (Nasdaq: ASKJ). Rich Duprey didn't see anything too revolutionary about the trend last month.
With those things considered, today's desktop search news from Yahoo! seems barely worth the press release, other than the fact that those who are stalwart Yahoo! users know that they've now got the option.
On the other hand, Yahoo!'s product seems to do everything that the rivals' functions do, including desktop search of video and MP3 files. Other features including previewing of content before launch and allowing users to specify the content they don't want indexed for search.
However, there's an interesting aside -- Yahoo! seems to have relied on an outside entity called X1 Technologies (a company that's related to Idealab, a name that might ring a bell to many of you) to actually provide the technology for the product.
I personally got a little more excited about Yahoo!'s recent word that it was launching video search and real-time traffic reports, both of which seemed to up the ante in the struggle for Internet users' eyeballs and advertising dollars. It definitely catered to the idea that Yahoo! needs to not only provide what the other guy does but also come up with its own innovations as well.
At any rate, Yahoo!'s desktop search launch seems like a case of same story, different day, different search giant. In this arena, it seems to me that Google's still got powerful first-mover advantage on its side.
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