Yahoo just launched Scout, an AI-powered answer engine that's taking a different approach to the search wars. Unlike ChatGPT or Perplexity, which bury source links, Scout puts them front and center - displaying up to nine clickable links per query. Built on Anthropic's Claude model and integrated across Yahoo's search properties, Scout represents the company's bet that the future of AI search looks a lot like its past as 'Jerry's guide to the world wide web.'
Yahoo is making its big AI play, and it looks nothing like what Google or OpenAI are building. The company just launched Scout, an AI-powered answer engine that's betting the future of search isn't about hiding the web - it's about highlighting it.
Scout went live today as a tab in Yahoo's main search engine (still the third-largest in the US, CEO Jim Lanzone keeps reminding people), a standalone web app at scout.yahoo.com, and the centerpiece of Yahoo's revamped mobile search app. Ask it a question and you get something familiar if you've used Perplexity or Google's AI Mode - a conversational answer with context. But here's where it diverges: Scout loads each response with prominent blue hyperlinks, typically nine per page, plus a master list of all sources.
"It's moved from 'how do I find things on the internet' to weeding through clickbait and now AI slop," Eric Feng, who runs Yahoo's research group and led the Scout project, told The Verge. The pitch is simple: use AI to cut through the noise, but don't pretend the web doesn't exist.
Under the hood, Scout runs on Anthropic's Claude model, paired with what Feng calls "Yahoo content, Yahoo data, Yahoo personality." That's where Yahoo's quirky advantage kicks in. The company operates massive content verticals - Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, a substantial newsroom, plus partnerships with publishers across the web. It's essentially a content machine with decades of reference material to feed an LLM. Web search data flows from Yahoo's longstanding partnership with and Bing.
