As the lead of a skunkworks-esque group that focuses on radical new experiences beyond traditional search, I can tell you that Yahoo! is in the most exciting phase of its entire 16-year history. My view is that it’s fight, not flight, for the company and there has never been a time where so many people have wanted to fight like today. Yahoo! Search has some product experiences that are so radically different, you’ll sit back in your seat thinking, “what the &$%# just happened?”

Before we get into it, let’s clear the air about the Microsoft Search Alliance deal. It was simple: instead of three different search engines spending millions of dollars in R&D and hardware crawling and indexing the entire Web – a corpus of data that grows faster than most competitors can keep up with – we decided to outsource the back-end services. The decision was easy. Focusing only on crawling, indexing, ranking and serving at web scale wasn’t, and isn’t, the way for Yahoo! to win the Search game. If we could have a provider that was on par or better than our technology, we could focus more attention and resources on the experience side of search. When fully implemented around the world, we stand to save significant sums in hardware and R&D and instead focus even more on delivering a stellar user experience: seems like a win-win to me.

So that’s what we’ve been doing with great zest, cleaning up the experience, introducing new architectural feats, and setting the stage for some big swings in the pipeline – in line with our Search strategy of “Answers, Not Links.” With this cleanup effort we’ve not only stabilized our place in the market but we are steadily growing. Some of these initiatives, just in the past six months, include Search Direct, an innovative answers-as-you-type experience; our new, super clean look for Image Search results; and our recent enhancements to the Search results page.

Photo Caption: For Search Direct, we put real gusto into the focus of ‘answers, not links’ by surfacing answers and structured content directly into what I call the “Search Box of Awesome.”

What Search looks like to us over the next 18 months:

• From destination to companion: Access and convenience are two key components in the search game. In the next 18 months, Search will be a companion experience that gives you answers immediately and instantly without leaving the page you are on – effortlessly.

• From fragmented to seamless: Consistency and simplicity are two key components in the search game. Users are increasingly searching on multiple devices. In the next 18 months, your devices and platforms will be seamlessly connected, allowing you to start an experience on one device and continue effortlessly onto another, with simple access to any information on any other devices. Search will be evolving into a beautiful and consistent multi-modal experience that simply integrates into your everyday life.

• From more information to better information: Relevancy and depth are two key components in the search game. When you search for something — say, Adirondack chairs — do you really care that we returned 9,150,000 results? Probably not. In the next 18 months, Search will focus on a deep experience that gives you only what you want to know, taking into account your search history, click behavior, demographics, social graph, and browsing history to provide you with a 1:1 experience. It will tell you why it served you the results it did and allow you to pivot on a number of aspects to further tune the page. It will no longer be a search engine designed for the masses, it will be a search engine tailored just for you. Some call it a results page; I call it an intent satisfaction experience.

I can tell you, from the inside I see more focus on unifying our portfolio, fast-tracking big bets, truly innovative thinking, and a deep, aggressive hunger to not only fight, but to really go for the jugular. You can expect a different beast to emerge in the coming months.

Proud Yahoo,
Ethan Batraski
Director of User Intent & Experiences, Yahoo! Search

Ethan is very proud to have worked at Yahoo! for the past two years as head of product for an experience group within Yahoo! Search. He has been in product and design for more than 10 years, and in search for the past six years, where he has done everything from founding startups to leading product & design for billion-dollar portfolios at Fortune 100 companies.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series entitled, “In My Own Words,” that will give Yahoo employees the opportunity to share their own stories about Yahoo!. Feel like yodeling your own? Post your Yahoo! story on your social networks using the hashtag #myYahoostory.

As the newest Yahoo! employee, at the risk of being highly corny, I’m delighted to yodel my first purple-hued shout-out to the 600 million people and tens of thousands of advertisers and publishers who enjoy Yahoo!’s products every day.

Some of you might ask why anyone would say goodbye to surfing and cycling the Central Coast of California or travelling the globe with their family to take on the job of leading products and technology at Yahoo!  My answer’s pretty easy – meet just some of the brilliant people at Yahoo! that want to change the world, and then scan the amazing list of leading products around the globe these people have delivered at scale.  When I think about what this company has meant to anyone who has used the Internet, worked in the Internet industry, or wanted to reach people across the world, there is simply none better.

From wildly popular services like Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, Flickr and Yahoo!’s mobile sites and apps, to Yahoo!’s best-in-class content properties like Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! Sports, to many, many other great products across the world, Yahoo!’s product portfolio continues to be the envy of the industry.  Those incredible services and their respective audiences bring tremendous value for advertisers, which is why Yahoo! serves up 10 billion ads across its network every day and is the #1 publisher of online display advertising. How can anyone not want to be a part of that?

And that’s just what consumers and advertisers see from the outside.  Inside Yahoo!, there’s technological and scientific brilliance everywhere you look.  With 500 patents, one of the world’s largest cloud computing infrastructures, and top scientific talent across computer science, machine learning, economics and social sciences, I’m awed at the caliber of people I’m going to be working with. The intellectual horsepower doesn’t stop there – I’m looking forward to working with some of the smartest and best-in-class talent around the world in marketing, advertising sales, partnerships, programming, service engineering and operations.  The commitment Yahoos have shown over the years to delivering the best experience to both consumers and advertisers is one of the key things that attracted me here.  We’re in the business of delivering bespoke experiences to our consumers, partners and advertisers and I’m looking forward to working with all of you to build on that reality.

This week marks an exciting new journey for me personally, and I’m thrilled to be sharing my experiences and background with the world class people at Yahoo!  We have big opportunities, as well as big challenges ahead of us, and I’m getting ready to dive in and work with this great team to make Yahoo! even more central to daily online life than it has been over the past decade and a half.

My first day in the office will be May 17^th and I can’t wait to get started. Stay tuned for more as I get settled and dig in with my new team.

‘Nuff said.

-Blake Irving, EVP, Chief Product Officer, Yahoo!

After handing Yahoo!’s signature yodel over to the people – you whole-heartedly responded – by uploading more than a whopping 21,000 yodels to our online Yodel Studio! Each yodel has its own personality as unique as each of you.  There are hip-hop yodels, country yodels, rock n’ roll yodels, Bollywood yodels… I think you get the point.

Out of all of the yodels submitted, who really rocked the mic?  Based on number of views, we’ve selected the top 3 yodels from each market.  Now YOU can help us choose who will go to the next level and take it PLATINUM! Vote daily for your favorites!

U.S. Finalists:

Tiffany Jo from Arizona – Yodeling since she was five years old, “I choose to participate because I enjoy singing and yodeling. I thought it would be a great opportunity to do what I love.”

Carlo from Arizona – New to yodeling but been singing for a lifetime, “I searched through most of the songs that were available to use as background music until I found the one that brought out the most emotion out of me.”

Christopher from Oklahoma – “What inspired my Yodel was hearing all the Yahoo! Yodels in the past, and wanting to do something a little bit different! I decided to add a little bit of ME in my Yodel!”

UK Finalists:

Katherine
Hajar
James

And representing India:

Nishant
Ankitaa
Ayesha

One winning yodel will represent each country (US, UK and India) and will be featured on one of the world’s largest stages: Yahoo!’s homepage!  So declare yourself, “rock the vote” or in this case, yodel it out – in short, vote soon as polls close on November 15 (11:59pm PT) and the winner will be announced on November 16th! What are you waiting for, vote for your favorite yodel now!

Crowds of starstruck pedestrians formed around a recording studio that we erected overnight in Times Square as yodels echoed through the canyons of the city. We invited anyone and everyone to come inside and give us their best interpretation of the Yahoo! yodel. What was at stake? The potential fame and bragging rights of having their yodel featured on the Yahoo! Homepage and in our new advertising campaign.

We camped out on Military Island for 12 hours in a brick building that included a dressing room with costume gear, a rehearsal room with gold records on the wall, and a state-of-the-art recording studio. Celebrities were on hand to mentor yodelers — Jewel, Pete Wentz, LeAnn Rimes, Randy Jackson, and Rob Cavallo, chief creative officer of Warner Music Group and one of the world’s most highly acclaimed music producers. (Jewel said her dad was so proud that all those years of coaching her to yodel had finally paid off.) Kimberly Caldwell of American Idol fame was our tireless emcee and we even had America’s Got Talent’s Manuela “The Yodeling Dominatrix” Horn to help rally brave souls. And house band musicians — with many Grammys among them — sat atop the marquee of the Hard Rock Cafe (Hollywood Squares-style), ready to give a live riff for each yodeler. We heard rap yodels, bluegrass yodels, punk yodels, funk yodels, hip hop yodels, the list goes on. We even had two Cirque du Soleil performers stop by for a rendition. And they were all projected on the Jumbotron for the crowd to enjoy (or, at least, be amused by).

The last time we sought the best new Yahoo! yodeler, back in 2003, we ended up launching the singing career of a 9-year-old girl named Taylor Ware. Yesterday, one lucky performer (pictured above) — a foot messenger whose boss told her she could come perform before she delivered her last package of the day — caught the eye of Pete Wentz and Rob Cavallo, who spent extra time coaching her and left with her MySpace info and email address. Remember the name Chanese Elife, people — she might have a bright future ahead!

We also held events in London and Mumbai because, you know, yodeling knows no geographic bounds. The top winners for each country will be crowned on November 15th, based on which videos receive the most views. So head over to the gallery and check out the contenders. You’ll help them find an audience of more than 500 million people.

For more on the event, read Lyndsey Parker’s Yahoo! Music blog posts, browse photos in our Flickr photostream (slideshow below), and watch video highlights from our NY, London, and Mumbai events:

Ya-hooooo!

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Today, we’re giving the Yahoo! yodel back to the people with the launch of Yodel Studio, a global casting call for the world’s best yodels. Yodelers who take us up on this challenge will personalize and reinterpret our yodel, competing for a chance to be featured in Yahoo!’s new global advertising campaign and on one of the world’s largest stages: the Yahoo! homepage. Your yodel will also be heard through the donation Yahoo! will make to local and global charities of your choice for each yodel submitted (up to $130,000).

To kick this whole effort off in style, Yahoo! is hosting live Yodel Studio events today in New York’s Times Square, London’s Covent Garden and tomorrow at Mumbai’s High Street Phoenix Mall. Professional recording studios have been built in each location with celebrities on hand to coach yodelers. Jewel, Pete Wentz, LeAnn Rimes, and Randy Jackson will join us in New York with super producer Rob Cavallo; Pixie Lott and the X Factor’s Sinitta will be in London; and Bollywood singer Shankar Mahadevan and musical artists VJ Nikhil Chinappa and Shaa’ir + Func will mentor in Mumbai.

And if you need some yodel inspiration – might I suggest channeling your inner Jewel?

So get yodeling soon – the deadline to submit your yodel online is November 8! Read more here.

Brian Mullin
Senior Director, Buzz Marketing

Wylie’s not some commercial voiceover talent. He’s the real deal — a true singing cowboy. He’s got the belt buckle, hat, ranch, and 20 horses to prove it. I caught up with Wylie to find out how on Earth he got his start in yodeling, how Yahoo! found him for our first ad campaign, how life has changed since then, what he’s doing now, and what it’s like to be the world’s most recognized yodeler. You can read a full transcript of the interview here. But for you multitasking, RSS feed-scanning, I-only-have-time-for-300-words-or-less types, here are some highlights:

• Wylie yodeled for brands like Mitsubishi, Taco Bell, Porsche, and Miller Light before creating his 3-note hit for Yahoo! in 1996.
• When our ad agency brought him into the recording studio, he came up with 10 different yodels of the name Yahoo! in a matter five minutes.
• Wylie yodels for a living with his “Wylie & the Wild West” band.
• Wylie’s yodeling notoriety has landed him gigs with A Prairie Home Companion, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. He has appeared on the Grand Ol Opry more than 50 times.
• Wylie trains cutting (or cattle) horses on a ranch near Dusty, Washington (population: 11).
• His dad was a Montana cowboy and ranch veterinarian and yodeled on horseback.
• Wylie learned to yodel from a reel-to-reel tape his aunt received from an Austrian ski team.
• Wylie and Yahoo! settled a lawsuit in 2002 after we inadvertently used his yodel in a national ad without the proper contract.
• Wylie toured the country as the emcee for the national Yahoo! Yodel Challenge in 2003. The winner, via write-in submission, was Taylor Ware, a 9-year-old who went on to becoming a finalist on “America’s Got Talent.”

And, yes, we’ve sent him his very own Insta-Yodel button. No home is complete without it.

Here’s Wylie in action, singing his most popular live song, about some guy who made it big by yodeling for a little Internet company in the mid-90s. And you can learn how to yodel like Wylie here.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Photo by Bill Watts