With its Yahoo Open Strategy, Yahoo drops its bid toward an open platform for custom application built on core elements of the web services site. As with other platform plays from Facebook and Google, Yahoo is trying to entice the third party development world with a host of assets and tools for extending the value -- and reach -- of the Yahoo product/service line.
Yahoo Opens Up Search with Search Monkey as part of Open Strategy initiative
Beginning with Search Monkey which opens up Yahoo Search to developers, Yahoo plans to make Mail and Address Book available as well for the development of social networking applications.
Yahoo's Chief Architect of Platforms Neal Sample asserts that Yahoo has been 'social-networky' all along:
"There's a massive, latent social network within Yahoo, and we're going to bring it to the surface. We're making Yahoo more social, but we're not building yet another social network. We already have an incredible social network, we just need to unlock it."
Right or wrong, Yahoo can hardly have waited much longer to enter this sector of web services. With Google featuring numerous applications on its site already developed using its Google App Engine Web Services platform, Yahoo must play an aggressive game of catch-up.
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