Yahoo BOSS API to Live On After Microsoft Deal

It's been a few months since the announcement of the Yahoo - Microsoft search deal, but it's still far from being completed and there is still a lot of confusion about how everything will slot in. One thing that has been causing developers a lot of headache is the fate of the popular search API Yahoo BOSS. With Yahoo Search out of the picture, they were left wondering what would happen to the platform many were depending on, leading some to ask the US Department of Justice to intervene. After a few months of silence, Yahoo is now saying that the platform will survive, though the details are still a bit sketchy.

"We understand your frustration. This process has been long for all of us due to the complex nature of our agreement with Microsoft, and we appreciate your patience," Ashim Chhabra from the Yahoo Search BOSS team writes. "Under this agreement, Yahoo! is permitted to continue offering the BOSS web service, with search results that would integrate Yahoo! services and content with algorithmic results provided by Microsoft."

This answers some of the more urgent questions. Yahoo BOSS will live on after the deal goes through and will offer its users search results powered by Bing and everything else will continue to come from Yahoo. This should give developers some peace of mind. It isn't clear though what exactly will change, what will come from Microsoft and what from Yahoo and so on.

And that's not the end of it. It looks like Yahoo may start charging for the services, something it says was a known possibility since before the Microsoft deal. "Prior to the announcement of the Yahoo!-Microsoft search agreement, we'd already shared our intention to explore a fee-based structure for BOSS. We continue to explore an appropriate fee structure or other revenue model as we work through the future of BOSS," Chhabra continues. It may not be what the developers were looking for, but it's probably the best they could expect under the circumstances. Yahoo says it will be announcing more when new details become available.