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Consider this your every-few-years reminder that Yahoo exists. And is still kinda big, somehow! Depending on the source, it’s the No. 6 or No. 8 website in the U.S. and in the top 20 globally; two of its subdomains, news.yahoo.com and finance.yahoo.com, are each among the 15 largest news sites in America. And it’s still No. 3 in search — behind Bing (which powers Yahoo’s search results) but ahead of DuckDuckGo. Not bad for a site you probably last thought of in 2005.
At The Verge, David Pierce brings news of its latest feature: a new AI-powered search tool called Yahoo Scout:
Scout, in its early form, is a search portal that will immediately be familiar if you’ve ever used Perplexity or clicked over to Google’s AI Mode. It shows a text box and some suggested queries. You type a question; it delivers an answer. Right now Scout is a tab in Yahoo’s search engine (which, CEO Jim Lanzone likes to remind me every time we talk, is somehow still the third-most-popular search engine in the U.S.), a standalone web app, and a central feature in the new Yahoo Search mobile app. Yahoo calls it an “answer engine,” but it’s AI web search. You get it. And so far, it’s the most search-y of any similar product I’ve tried. I like it a lot.
Pierce lists several reasons why Yahoo is weirdly well-placed to offer a tool like Scout. It has still-sizable teams in finance, sports, and news. It’s not as reliant on the traditional search/keywords ad model as Google. And Scout is more “web-forward” than its rivals — making links to news stories more prominent, which should sound good to publishers.
But I wanted to note one other potential edge: Yahoo Scout is positioned to be the AI tool for when you’re confused by popular culture.
I mean, take a look at some of the sample queries it proposes to users: What did Alix Earle reveal about Braxton Berrios breakup? Why did Doechii go barefoot at the Louvre? Why did Finding Her Edge fans turn on Brayden? Why are Skyscraper Live commentators getting roasted online? Why is the airbend illusion everywhere on TikTok?
If the typical Yahoo user is someone who never figured out how to change their browser’s homepage, it’s also likely someone very confused by the pop culture world of their grandchildren. It seems low-key brilliant to position Scout as the way to answer questions that definitely aren’t in Wikipedia — ones that rely on rapid absorption of signals from social media and elsewhere. Who knows whether Yahoo Scout will be a success — the mind of the 2026 Yahoo user is inherently inscrutable — but it’s a reminder that we’re not destined to end up with just one single AI “answer engine.” Niche use cases are there waiting to be solved. Also, come on, Brayden:
Photo of the Yahoo sign at its San Jose, Calif., headquarters in 2022 via Adobe Stock.
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