In the search engine wars, it's a daily battle for territory and every competitor must stand its ground. Speculation concerning mergers is rife, and the question on everyone's mind is; who's going to get with who? As the major players battle it out for a bigger piece of the advertising pie, one smaller start-up managed to make the headlines this week thanks to a brazen presentation by Yahoo!. Searchme, the $39.6m US start-up has been feeling the squeeze this week as Yahoo! pushes for a greater ad-market share. Yahoo!'s main ploy in its advance has been the BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) product which it has been aggressively promoting across the web. Unfortunately for Searchme however, it seems the search giant has had to borrow a few images to boost its sales pitch.
The image, which appeared in a Cnet article, is a near replica screenshot of the Searchme interface just without the Searchme logo. Understandably the company is upset. The newly-born is working hard to be innovate, dynamic and original and so having Yahoo! take credit for your work can't be a boost to your PR - or so you might think.
The question on everyone's mind is; why would Yahoo! present an image of a competitor as their own? The image is almost identical to the Searchme interface and it was only a matter of time before accusations were directed towards Yahoo!.
BOSS may well be Yahoo!'s final attempt to further its grasp over the sponsored-search market. The newly-launched product allows developers to set up their own search service, with sponsored advertising supporting the running of the program. To all appearances it seems as though the company is keen to develop its own successful ad-revenue generating program and will do everything it can to make it successful, even if this means a little bit of visual plagiarism.
It seems strange that Yahoo! would reproduce another company's work so illicitly - if that's in fact the explanation for the strange similarities - and maybe we'll never know the reason why. For Searchme however, the story can go two ways. As a start-up that hasn't even reached its first birthday, the company should feel proud that Yahoo! might want to be associated with its interface. In fact, Yahoo! even mentioned that it had suggested a partnership in the past, however Searchme wasn't interested.
All of this considered, the reason Searchme probably got so ticked off is that Yahoo! has suggested it is possible to replicate their $36.9m start-up just by using their free software and that's enough to anger any fledgling search-player.
