Well, in some instances it is always better to backtrack and rebuild rather than continue going down the wrong road. In saying that - would it have been better as Alpha Alpha rather than Alpha Beta It shows Yahoo are at least trying to work more of a search portal than a search engines - and in that sense is not in direct competition with google for the search engine market, but could well be looking to be the #1 search portal as opposed to the #1 search engine. The only question is on their monetization of it - I would be surprised if they left the sponsors as optional selection - though it should therefore make for more targeted and interested consumers (and therefore higher ROI) - in theory. Although the total revenue raised would likely be smaller than if left to be placed in organic results.
Look at the results though. They're all spam! Their algorithm is so bad on Alpha. Try ringtones as an example and you'll see what I mean!
Can you provide any proof? Did you manage to get a copy of source codes of both engines and verify that? Please validate your comment.
So you did a search on a keyword most good SEOs already know is full of spam on ALL the major search engines.
I think the pages load much faster, especially when you try to go to the next pages. It appears almost instantly.
LOL,one of my keywords ranks No1 in alpha search,but ony NO 9 IN Yahoo search.I hope more people use this.