Yahoo! continues to launch interesting new services. In what I see as a poke at certain products which remain in beta for years the new tool is called Alpha and it is in Beta. That's funny.
Yahoo! describes Alpha (Beta) like this:
Alpha is a new beta product from Yahoo! that introduces the concept of Federated Search. With Alpha, you can search across many different search indices all on one page. Also, if you have a Yahoo! ID, you can log in to personalise your experience by moving the search sources around to suit you, or adding completely new ones of your own.
This offers a comprehensive search result that's tailored and controlled by you, the searcher!
In other words, its a custom search engine. It looks very nice and clean, like all Yahoo! products do these days:
It's nice that sponsored results have moved to the sidebar. One of the gripes about Yahoo!'s excellent search is the box of sponsored results on top of popular SERP's.
Hattip: Steven Rubel.