Yahoo rolls out Yahoo Scout amid competition with Perplexity and Google AI Mode

New Delhi: Yahoo has launched an AI-powered search product called Yahoo Scout, marking its entry into the increasingly competitive market for answer-based search tools dominated by companies such as Google and Perplexity. The feature is currently available in beta to users in the United States.

Described by the company as an “answer engine”, Scout is designed to respond to natural language queries by generating direct answers rather than returning a list of links. The system draws on information from the open web, Yahoo’s own content and user data to produce summarised responses to search questions.

Yahoo said Scout is informed by hundreds of millions of user profiles and a large internal knowledge graph built from its long history in search and digital media. The company positions this dataset as a differentiator at a time when search platforms are moving towards AI-generated responses.

The tool is integrated with Yahoo’s existing properties, allowing it to surface information related to weather, sports, financial markets, shopping and news. It also includes commerce-related responses that consolidate product information and reviews, as well as financial summaries linked to Yahoo Finance, such as stock movements, earnings data and analyst commentary.

Yahoo has partnered with Anthropic, using its Claude model as the underlying AI system for Scout, while Microsoft’s Bing grounding technology is used to support web-based sourcing. According to Yahoo, this combination is intended to balance generated responses with externally sourced information.

Speaking about the launch, Yahoo chief executive Jim Lanzone said search behaviour was undergoing a significant shift and that the company was drawing on its existing assets to adapt to that change. The beta release, he said, represented an early stage of a broader rollout.

Yahoo Scout is accessible through the Yahoo Search app on iOS and Android, as well as via a dedicated website, and is available to a large portion of Yahoo’s US user base. The company said further expansion and personalisation features are expected to follow.