As you may have heard through the grapevine, after 4 years of an incredible roller coaster ride with Yahoo, the time has come to move on to other opportunities. I am bootstrapping my own stealth (for now) startup. In parallel, today I’m launching a consulting practice to provide advisory services to other startups and more-established companies. After over 8 years in the big corporate worlds of Yahoo and eBay, I’m excited about taking everything I’ve learned from my experiences at those two great companies and returning to the entrepreneurial world.

Yahoo has amazing and loyal talent, and I am very proud of what my Search team accomplished over the past four years. I obviously cannot capture it all, but I wanted to share highlights of just a few great products they delivered:
• Relaunching Yahoo! Search in Oct 2007 with industry-leading Search Assist features
• Bringing structured data into Web Search for the first time with Y! SearchMonkey
• Opening up Search technology to the world like never before with the Yahoo! Search BOSS platform
• Bringing true applications to Search with Search Pad
• Launching an entirely new Y! Search experience again in Sep 2009
• Creating incredibly engaging Image and Video Search experiences
• Integrating Twitter and real-time content in Nov 2009
• An addictive entertainment Search experience that launched this March
• And finally, the truly fun Yahoo! Sketch-a-Search app on the iPhone
 
It has been a real pleasure to work with such a talented and passionate team. I’m going to miss everyone and I wish them the best of luck. Keep fighting the purple fight, guys!

- Larry

P.S. Now that I no longer have a free coffee bar, I had to undertake the arduous task of discovering all of the best coffee in the South Bay. Here is my list on Yelp. I work hard so you don’t have to.

The Yahoo! Search team,
originally uploaded by Yodel Anecdotal.

See if you can find me. A “Where’s Waldo” experience

Well, we finally announced it. Yahoo Search is going way open very soon. We will be allowing publishers and site owners to provide us with additional information about their site. This will provide a next-generation search experience with results that can display some of the rich data that is today only available on the website after the user clicks through. For example, ratings and reviews, great photographs, useful site links, etc. The additional beauty is that users can control whether they want to see this additional info or not. Their choice. A picture captures the essence of this better than my description (see below).

An Open Approach to Search
The open theme continues today as we are announcing that we are opening up Yahoo! Search itself. That’s right — you heard it correctly — the Yahoo! Search experience will soon be open. This open search platform enables 3rd parties to build and present the next generation of search results. There are a number of layers and capabilities that we have built into the platform, but our intent is clear — present users with richer, more useful search results so that they can complete their tasks more efficiently and get from “to do” to “done.” Read full blog post…

Good coverage and comments on TechCrunch. Want to learn more about our Open Search Platform? Sign up here

Key Highlight
Yahoo isn’t afraid to shake up the traditional web search paradigm in order to give users what they need: More useful search results that will help them get things done more efficiently. The end result will be something that is not only good for users, but also good for web site owners.

Well, the biggest consumer-facing change to the Yahoo! Search experience has arrived. We just launched our new Search design this week, which features an incredible amount of great new improvements including:

• Search Assist – suggestions and related concepts that give users a new way to explore a subject area they may be unfamiliar with. Try a search for the United Nations.
• Multimedia integration – video, Flickr photos, etc.
• Enhanced Shortcuts – music artists, movies, travel destinations, and athletes

It is all about improving the experience for consumers who are trying to get things done. No one wants to struggle with a search engine when they need information. Search just shouldn’t be so hard. With our new Search experience, it just got a whole lot easier.

To learn more, visit our Yahoo! Search Blog or you can check out my recent television interview with CBS 5.

It has been a while since I have posted. If you head on over to Yahoo! Search, you will see why I’ve been a little busy lately. We’ve been working on a ton of great new ideas for our Search experience and some of them are now ready for you! It is all about giving consumers a much better experience when they are searching, so that they find exactly what they are looking for faster and are happier with the results. Check out what we’ve been up to and I think you will agree.

A new Travel Destination Shortcut

A new Music Artists Shortcut

A new Audio preview feature

An exciting new Yahoo! Search Assist feature (image from Danny Sullivan on Flickr). Danny has a great article about it on Search Engine Land titled Search Suggestions on Steroids: Yahoo! Search Assist

I’m sorry that I can’t provide you with a link to our new Search Assist technology yet, since it is currently in testing. But, stay tuned!

If you want to read more about Yahoo! Search, you can check out our blog.