Yahoo! is taking a bold step tonight: opening up its index and search engine to any outside developers who want to incorporate Yahoo! Search's content and functionality into search engines on their own sites. The company that sees just over 20% of the searches performed each day believes that the new program, called BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service), could create a cadre of small search engines that in aggregate will outstrip their own market share and leave Google with less than 50% of the search market.

It's an ambitious and exciting idea. It could also become very profitable when Yahoo! later requires the inclusion of Yahoo! search adds on sites using the BOSS APIs. BOSS will include access to Yahoo! web, news and image searches.

Websites wishing to leverage the BOSS APIs will be allowed to can blend in their own ranking input, change the presentation of results. There are no requirements for attribution to Yahoo! and there's no limit on the number queries that can be performed.

At launch Yahoo! BOSS will see live integrations with