After suffering a pounding at the hands of Google in the search game, Yahoo! has refined its offering. "Glue", the new search pages by Yahoo! are a combination of the conventional search page plus video, resources and Flickr images. And one has to admit, it looks quite snappy.

The new avatar combines into one page what Google makes you click four tabs for. But in the inventory game, how it affects Yahoo! remains to be seen. With more available on just one page, there is a good chance that there may be overall loss in inventory. And for some reason, at times, the sponsored links also didn’t show up. It’s still in Beta, but the advertising part is one you would expect them to get right straight away!

It was also interesting to note that the search pages highlight YouTube videos as opposed to Yahoo! Videos. With YouTube going local, there may be good reason for Yahoo! to use their own sites. Also seen on the ‘Glue’ page was a box with Wikipedia links. We searched for IPL and there was the Wikipedia box with quick facts. Very useful, we must say, but can’t understand how Yahoo! will monetize this. Gaining users seems to be the obvious answer, but that’s easier said than done, eh?

At first glance, this looks like a good product, but the more we stared at it, the clutter started to come through. While on the one hand, the company has stripped down its search home page, on the other, the results page is showing additional clutter. Google’s USP has been accuracy of results and ease of use. While Yahoo! may be aiming for accuracy, the ease of use seems to be going out of the window.

Will we be hooked? Time will tell!