Yahoo’s Open Search service that isn’t OpenSearch

Seriously Yahoo, what were you thinking?

Today Yahoo announced their “Open Search Platform” – saying that it will “allow third parties to enhance the Yahoo Search experience.”

You might assume that this means they’re doing something cool with OpenSearch – the set of open standards once established by A9 and later embraced by IE / FireFox to hook up search providers, and recently used by Microsoft’s SharePoint and Search Server products as the means by which to support federated search results.

But you’d be wrong.  Apparently Yahoo thinks that by adding a space between “Open” and “Search” nobody will be confused that their offering is not, in fact, OpenSearch compatible.

A commenter I know on TechCrunch even asks if we’ll soon see “Yahoo announced a Really Simple Syndication Platform” that isn’t RSS based?

Change the name, Yahoo.  This attempt to co-opt the OpenSearch label is distasteful at best.  And we’re trying to buy you why?