Yahoo Hears Call of Audio Search

[Judi Lynn]

Yahoo Hears Call of Audio Search

Wired News Report
10:16 AM Aug. 04, 2005 PT

Yahoo is testing a new search-engine feature that will pore through millions of songs offered by popular internet music services like iTunes, Rhapsody and Napster.

The free service, available at Yahoo Search, boasts an index of more than 50 million audio files, including newscasts, speeches and interviews posted online, as well as the internet's deepening pool of "podcasts." The index identifies the content by reading metadata embedded in the files.

Other internet search engines already find audio files, but Yahoo (YHOO) is touting its as the most comprehensive, largely because it has received permission to index downloadable songs offered by virtually all of the internet's top music services.

The expansion coincides with an increasing emphasis by Yahoo and other search engines on indexing online video. The diversification beyond searching simple text online reflects the web's evolution into a multimedia hub -- a shift that the top search engines hope to parlay into profits.
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