Yahoo Scout looks like a more web-friendly take on AI search

Yahoo has launched Scout, an AI-powered answer engine designed to return the company to its roots as a comprehensive guide to the web, but now enhanced with AI. Scout functions similarly to Perplexity or Google's AI Mode, providing direct answers to queries. Yahoo believes it is uniquely positioned to succeed because it controls extensive content verticals (Sports, Finance, Mail, etc.), allowing it to ground its LLM (based on Anthropic's Claude) in high-quality, proprietary data, supplemented by web data from a Microsoft/Bing partnership. Unlike Google, Yahoo does not have a massive ad business to protect, enabling a faster transition toward making Scout the primary search interface. Monetization will initially rely on affiliate links and ads, keeping the service free. A key differentiator for Scout is its emphasis on linking out; in testing, it highlighted external sources more prominently than competitors like ChatGPT or Perplexity, making it feel more like a traditional search engine focused on navigating the open web rather than an AI companion that ignores external sources.

(Source：The Verge)