Yahoo! yesterday stepped up its efforts to forge ahead as an independent company with a bold move to open up access to its search technology.

Yahoo! Search Boss, which stands for Build your Own Search Service will allow outsiders to use Yahoo!’s data centres and build customised web search services on top of its own search engine. It is designed to erode Google’s dominant position in internet search.

The company won't charge developers for using their platform, but plans to sell advertising on any applications that garner traffic. It hopes that dozens of small, specialised search developers will create sites to attract the users which Yahoo! has so far failed to find.

Google has about 61.6 per cent of the US search market in May, with Yahoo! a distant second at 20.4 per cent, according to Comscore.

The move highlights Yahoo!’s ambition to compete in its own right, despite its partnership with Google announced last month. Under that deal Yahoo! will let Google sell a portion of the web advertising that runs alongside Yahoo!’s own search results.

Yahoo! estimates that for start-ups to develop new search technologies and run them across the entire web takes a minimum capital investment of $300 million for hardware, networks, data, coding and expertise.

“We want to disrupt the search market by removing that entry barrier and make room for more players and more ideas,” Prabhakar Raghavan, the chief strategist for Yahoo! Search, said.

Mr Raghavan hopes to attract start-ups seeking to build services in the field of social search -- where the search results users see are influenced by what their friends find interesting.

Two early partners on Boss are the search start-up Me.dium and an ordinary language search firm, Hakia, which allows people to type in queries in plain English.

Me.dium offers a “buzz” search service in which users can see what sites their friends are visiting. Me.dium uses that information to supplement Yahoo!’s search results, creating a service that captures the internet zeitgeist.

Yahoo! has announced a major restructuring of its organisation and is fighting hard to prove its dynamism.

It is less than three weeks until the crucial Yahoo! annual meeting. Microsoft has said it will renew takeover talks with Yahoo! if the search engine group’s board is replaced under the plan by billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn.

Mr Icahn has been in discussion with Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, over the plans. Mr Icahn wants to replace Jerry Yang, Yahoo!'s embattled chief executive, and other senior management.

Microsoft has said it could not reach agreement to buy the group under the current Yahoo! board.

Mr Yang has blamed Microsoft for deliberately destabilising Yahoo! and said it would be a “bad choice” to trust Mr Icahn and his slate of directors.

Boss is the second phase of Yahoo!’s year-long effort to remake its web search strategy. In April, the company introduced SearchMonkey, a service that allows site owners and developers to control how Yahoo! searches appear on their sites.

Yahoo! is seeking to make its search technology the underlying engine for the next generation of search services.

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