California: Yahoo debuted Scout on Monday, an artificial intelligence-powered answer engine that blends traditional web search with generative AI across its platform serving two hundred fifty million US users.
The beta product, built on Anthropic’s Claude model and Microsoft Bing’s grounding API, represents the internet pioneer’s most ambitious technology revival since its five billion dollar acquisition by Apollo Global Management in twenty twenty-one.
Scout synthesizes information from the open web alongside Yahoo’s proprietary data spanning five hundred million user profiles, a knowledge graph covering over one billion entities, and eighteen trillion annual consumer events.
The interface displays responses through interactive media, structured tables, and transparent source links designed to make information easier to verify and trust. CEO Jim Lanzone described the launch as a pivotal moment in what he called one of internet history’s biggest attempted turnarounds.
The answer engine integrates across Yahoo’s entire ecosystem including Mail, News, Finance, Sports, and Shopping. In Finance, Scout delivers one-click access to real-time company insights, analyst ratings, and earnings call summaries with headlines refreshing every ten minutes. The Shopping integration condenses hours of product research into seconds by distilling expert reviews and user discussions into comparison tables with shoppable links.
Yahoo partnered with Anthropic specifically for Claude’s speed, clarity, and safety capabilities while continuing its longstanding Microsoft relationship through Bing’s grounding API.
The company explicitly stated user data remains internal and does not train either Claude or Bing models. Yahoo also joined Microsoft’s Publisher Content Marketplace pilot, aiming to support sustainable revenue opportunities for content creators.
The launch positions Yahoo as the third-largest US search engine competing directly against Google’s AI Overviews and emerging rivals like OpenAI’s Atlas browser. Unlike pure chatbot interfaces, Scout maintains prominent links to original sources throughout responses, addressing publisher concerns about traffic loss from AI-generated summaries. Eric Feng, who previously founded Hulu’s technical team, leads development as SVP of Yahoo Research Group.
Scout is immediately available at Scout.Yahoo.com and through the Yahoo Search app on iOS and Android. The free service may eventually add premium tiers, though Lanzone emphasized the core business would remain advertising-supported as the company develops new formats for generative AI search advertising.
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