David Watanabe has announced that Yahoo! has acquired the rights to Inquisitor, his instant search extension for Apple’s Safari web browser.
Watanabe writes on his blog, “For those unfamiliar, Inquisitor is a pioneering software extension that provides as-you-type instant search directly within the Safari web browser. Inquisitor makes navigating the web fast and effortless by providing instant search results within an unobtrusive pop-down window. It also performs live autocompletion, prioritizes results based on the user’s search history, and gives the user extensive control over their search experience.”
“I look forward to assisting Yahoo! in refining and extending the Inquisitor user experience beyond where it is today. I truly believe that Inquisitor and its users can only benefit, both from Yahoo’s resources and attention, and from the product integration possibilities that would have been impossible to pursue on my own,” Watanabe writes.
Watanabe writes, “It’s important to note that while I will continue to be the lead developer behind Inquisitor for Safari, I will not be joining Yahoo! as an employee. I have every desire and intention to remain an independent developer for the Mac, meaning that Inquisitor, Xtorrent, Acquisition, and NewsFire will all continue to be equal priorities in my life.”
Full article here.
More info and download link for Inquisitor 3.1 (freeware) here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Flying Chair Alert!!!
well there goes Inquisitor..
Jerry is looking to yang up the yahoolagains and twist Baller’s buttons to make him explode or at least do the Ballmer monkey dance around Redmond a few dozen times.
man I hope they dont ruin it somehow… Maybe yang found his ying and is gonna start supporting mac stuff first and windows crap second…
Crap.
I really liked that extension.
Once they cut off the ability to link it to Google, buh-bye and no thanks.
Works great! Nice move Yahoo.
Yes, Apple should have buyed it before! Now Mac’s search engine will be ruled by Yahoo… and M£ might yet finally buy yahoo! Means M£ will be abble to rule a part of Safari!!! Very weird!!! Very, very, weird!!!
@ almux:
Microsoft walked away from the table.
Like others have mentioned, I hope this doesn’t mean this great utility is going to go down the tubes.
This truly sucks. Won’t be long before Yahoo puts their inept stamp of Mac programming on this handy plug-in.
Crap! The one plugin I actually used goes away. Slender, invisible when you didn’t need it, simple, straightforward and easy to understand, jumping in with a soft suggestion but not forcing it on you. It was like the perfect woman. The perfect woman who jumps in Biff’s brand new convertible Ferrari and leaves you with the engagement ring you were about to give her! *sigh*
I hope they are aware that Inquisitor makes use of an InputManager, a technique which has been declared by Apple to be soon obsolete. Indeed, a trick is aleady needed to still use InputManagers under Leopard. Unfortunately, such processes then run as root. Good reason for Apple to ban the technique altogether very very soon.
@slcphoto
I’d agree with everything except for the whole ‘Biff’ part… I like Biff.
http://www.thebookofbiff.com
The Inquistion, what a show
The Inquistion, here we go
We know you’re wishing
That we’d go away
But the Inquistion’s here and it’s here to stay
The Inquistion, oh boy
The Inquistion, what a joy
The Inquistion, oy oy
ZFS = WWDC
Yahoo knows exactly nothing about Mac software and, from all appearances, cares even less. Too bad for Safari users everywhere. What Yahoo was thinking is anybody’s guess.
I like NewsFire very much. I wish all parties well in this.
I tried this plugin at the weekend, but it did not suit me, even when I changed the search parameters to make Google the default (do that in the new preference – Search). What disturbed me, however, was the lack of information about how to remove. That is in the Root>Library>Inputmanagers folder. Who would have guessed?
I liked Inquisitor, it is kind of cool!
So this plugin adds the functionality already found in firefox and camino?
nekogami13: Exactly! Safari is way behind the times in many other areas too. I’m not clear on why everyone thinks that Safari is the best thing to happen to computers since the mouse. Is it better than Internet Explorer 6 & 7? Undoubtedly, the answer is yes — with the exception of being able to sort bookmarks alphabetically. But Safari has a long way to go before it will be as good as Firefox, IMHO.
Been there done that…
This is simply a marketing tool for Yahoo to re-build it market share…
If one downloads this tool you get yahoo and loose direct access to goggle… not good!
Best to pass on this one!
Unless you prefer yahoo to google…
It took me a couple of hours to find and delete the dam thing and get back to google… hell it took so long I can’t even remember where I found the little bugger hiding…
Bottom line don’t go there… not worth the problems!