Yahoo plug-in gives brains to browser search
Yahoo's Inquisitor adds new abilities to the search box of Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari.
(Credit: CNET News)Yahoo has released a plug-in called Inquisitor that gives some new horsepower to the search box in Internet Explorer (download), Firefox (download), and Safari (download).
Inquisitor is designed to help people get to information faster, according to a Yahoo Search Blog posting Wednesday. It suggests search terms as people start typing, showing an updated list of possible Web sites below the search box. The results are individualized too: it spotlights Web pages a person has already visited and customizes search results according to previous searches.
In addition, on Internet Explorer, Inquisitor can help retrieve sites a person has bookmarked.
Inquisitor got its start on Apple's Safari, but Yahoo brought it to the top two browsers after acquiring Inquisitor in May.
After the acquisition, Yahoo rebuilt Inquisitor to use its own BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) technology, the company said.
Inquisitor is an example of the increasing intelligence that Internet companies are trying to build into computers. The search engines from Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google all suggest search queries as users start typing them in, for example. And in the browser, Firefox 3 offers an "awesome bar" that suggests Web sites that a person has bookmarked or already visited, while Google's new Chrome uses its bar to perform online searches directly.
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
- by vradosa November 4, 2008 9:51 PM PST
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