Yahoo! kicked off the new decade in high gear and it's been a big year for us, especially in Search. In 2010, we worked hard on innovating what we call the “front end” of our Search experiences to bring you more answers – not just those same old ten blue links you’ve been seeing on Search results pages for over a decade.

For example, we added features like apps, intelligent shortcuts, and Yahoo! Search Assist updates to help you save valuable time and keep you more entertained, informed and productive than ever.  And, in parallel, we were hard at work weaving search throughout the Yahoo! network and transitioning certain parts of our back-end technology to the Microsoft search platform.

Here's a recap of what we've been busy with this year:

• Completed the first phase of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance transition in the U.S. and Canada.
• Added richer shortcuts and suggestions to bring you more complete, faster answers that draw from our Web of Things, a powerful information system that acquires and enriches information available on the Web and unique to Yahoo!.
• Brought Search to you in more places across Yahoo!, sometimes before you even knew what you were looking for – with new Search enhancements in Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Answers and Yahoo! Mail.
• Innovated mobile search experiences with new apps, widgets, and HTML5-powered search for mobile browsers, since we know you're on the go more than ever before.
• Enhanced Yahoo! Search Assist to suggest locally relevant and more timely results based on when and where you actually are.
• Showed you more of what's hot with multimedia search so you can sit back and be entertained while finding what you’re looking for via Yahoo! Image and Video search.
• · Delivered new types, and more relevant search advertisements for when you want them.
• And (as you may have seen this week) launched even more Quick Apps so you can get stuff done while you're searching, as well as a new beta called Yahoo! Clues for searching the searchers.

We have no intention of slowing down either. Last year at this time, we said the possibilities for search technology were limitless, and I think that's more true today than ever before. You’ve seen just our first steps at re-imagining and fundamentally changing the face of Search as we know it today.  Search is not just about meeting one need – we are focused on meeting all your searching needs, from finding all information across many sources about a particular topic, to making comparisons, to taking action and completing tasks in your day.

So stay tuned – 2011 is approaching fast and there's much more still to come.

-       Shashi Seth, SVP, Yahoo! Search & Marketplaces