In lyrics whose authorship seems disputed between Barrett Strong and John Lee Hooker, we learn:
The best things in life are free
But you can keep ‘em for the birds and bees
Now give me money, that’s what I want.
Well, the good news from Yahoo is that, judging from today’s announcement, they seem serious about Yahoo! Search BOSS as one of their few remaining differentiators from Google’s relentless squeeze on the web search market. The bad news, for anyone who has been using it to power their applications, is that it won’t remain free. Use Duck Duck Go while you can!
This isn’t a surprise–they warned everyone from the start that their intention was to charge a usage fee. Everyone has a mortgage to pay–even Twitter–and I’m glad to see Yahoo trying to build a sustainable revenue model for this valuable service. I just hope they’ll be ale to make it work. Life can be pretty tough under the tyrnanny of free.
