Scout has two jobs, really. The first is just to be a guide, to find stuff on the web. \u201cIt\u2019s moved from \u2018how do I find things on the internet\u2019 to weeding through clickbait and now AI slop,\u201d says Eric Feng, who runs Yahoo\u2019s research group and has been leading the Scout project. But Scout\u2019s job is also to bring AI summaries and smarts to all of Yahoo\u2019s other products, and to help Yahoo users pull all that disparate data into one place.<\/p>\n
In a funny twist, Yahoo may be perfectly positioned to do this well. Because Yahoo runs huge content verticals like Sports and Finance, with a big newsroom of its own and partnerships with many other publishers, it has a huge amount of high-quality reference material for Scout. It also has Yahoo Weather and Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Horoscopes and Yahoo Shopping and Yahoo So Many Other Things Besides. Yahoo is a full-fledged content machine, and it can just point an LLM at all that content. \u201cWe\u2019re the only ones who can take our user data, our usage data, our content, our relationships and information, and combine that with everything we know about search into an AI answer engine,\u201d Lanzone says.<\/p>\n
Scout is pretty quickly going to be the centerpiece of Yahoo Search. Image: Yahoo<\/p>\n Google would probably take issue with that statement. It has many of Yahoo\u2019s same advantages, and a bunch of other ones, and a lot more users. But Yahoo has one key win over Google: It doesn\u2019t have a massive, indomitable search-ads business to protect. Because of the sheer scale of both its user base and its revenue, Google has to slow-play its way into making AI Mode the face of Google Search, even though that\u2019s obviously the plan. Yahoo has no such qualms: Lanzone says Scout won\u2019t replace standard Yahoo Search from day one, but makes it pretty clear that that\u2019s the plan before long.<\/p>\n There is still a business plan here, though. Scout is launching with affiliate links for shopping results and an ad unit at the bottom of some searches. All the AI search products seem to be deciding that ads are the way to monetize AI, and Yahoo is set up to get there quickly. The goal, Lanzone says, is to use ads to keep Scout free for everyone. \u201cMaybe one day we\u2019ll also have a paid tier,\u201d he adds, \u201cbut free search is extremely important.\u201d<\/p>\n One thing Yahoo isn\u2019t doing? Building its own foundation model. For one thing, Lanzone says, doing that is very expensive. \u201cWe think we can best serve our users not so much with the model,\u201d he says, \u201cbut with the grounding data and the personalization data that we can add on top of other people\u2019s models.\u201d Scout is based on Anthropic\u2019s Claude model, and what Feng describes as \u201cYahoo content, Yahoo data, Yahoo personality.\u201d Much of the web-search data comes from a partnership with Microsoft and Bing, as it has for many years.<\/p>\n Scout suggests stuff to ask, but also functions like a normal search box. Image: Yahoo<\/p>\n Everybody doing AI search swears they care deeply about the future of the open web, but in my testing so far, Scout is the most web-forward AI search product yet. When I asked Scout, \u201cWhat\u2019s the latest on this winter storm?\u201d it responded with a one-paragraph summary that included three links prominently highlighted in blue. After that, I got three sections of more details about what\u2019s happening in my Virginia town, the forecast to come, and then a \u201cLatest News\u201d section with links to Yahoo stories, Yahoo partner stories, and other links around the web. In total, the page had nine links, plus a way to see all the page\u2019s sources at once.<\/p>\n When I did the same search on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode, I got similar summaries, structured in similar ways. ChatGPT was the only one to link more prominently: It stuck a carousel of news links right at the top of the page. Other than that, all three platforms seem to hide links behind icons or light-colored buttons \u2014 only Scout seems to actually want you to click the links. Making sure people actually do click them will be crucial to the rest of Yahoo\u2019s business, and to keeping its newsroom and publisher partners on board with Scout\u2019s existence.<\/p>\n In my early tests of Scout, it feels much more like a search engine than an AI companion. Its tone is very straightforward, and it doesn\u2019t present like a friend to talk to. It\u2019s just a way to find information on the internet, organized conversationally rather than as a bunch of links. That doesn\u2019t sound particularly novel, but in a sea of AI tools that would love to pretend the internet doesn\u2019t exist at all, it\u2019s a refreshingly useful take on the genre. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve used Yahoo Search on purpose in a decade, but when I wanted to know when the Winter Olympics started, Scout gave me a better answer than any other search engine I tested. That\u2019s not enough to take on Google, but it\u2019s a decent start.<\/p>\n Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.David PierceClose David Pierce<\/p>\n Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n See All by David Pierce<\/a><\/p>\n AIClose<\/p>\n AI<\/p>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n See All AI<\/a><\/p>\n AppsClose<\/p>\n Apps<\/p>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n See All Apps<\/a><\/p>\n TechClose<\/p>\n Tech<\/p>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Yahoo-Scout-in-Mobile-App.png\"\/)
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