Alpha Beta?

Probably the worst name I've seen for a product in a while is Yahoo's Alpha, which is currently a beta, thus making it "Alpha (Beta)".  Having nothing better to do while I relax in my hotel still in NY thanks to our ISP migration, I decided to query this new search engine which the Yahoo team gave birth to "out of pizza and furious coding" (source).

So, like all new search engines which seem to be popping up daily, I decided to take it for a spin (though I like the one named Serph.com - sure to be confused with surf.com if it ever gains in popularity)).  I queried for web directory:  http://au.alpha.yahoo.com/search/web?p=web+directory#, and I found such marijuana-induced names as Goongee and Haabaa.   Honey, I found this great new directory of websites called Goongee that I book-marked for you.  Honey, lets order chinese for dinner.  I Goongeed for places in our area.  My tooth hurt so I Haabaad for a dentist. 

These two gems are in the top 10 results in this new engine.  I noticed the Yahoo guys made it with Ajax, so when you click the next page or change your query, it only changes the results and not the entire page.  I actually don't like it.  This is one case where I think ajax doesn't really add anything worthwhile to the user experience.  Maybe it saves their servers a little bandwidth. 

On the preferences page if you click "customise" (or "customize" where I come from), you can drag and drop to take one thing from the sidebar and make it your main content pane.  Kind of cool, I guess, but I daresay, I still don't see anything revolutionary worthwhile of a product launch.  So you eat pizza, code furiously, come up with the name Alpha, and I'm supposed to fall in love and become your faithful customer?  That's as sad as the looksmart guys marching past our booth at SES with their white shirts and black ties and nerdy glasses shouting their propoganda slogans (Which did happen, by the way).  Totally uncool and unprofessional.  I was embarrassed for all involved in that spectacle. 

I'm really tired of these products that just aggregate other products.   So now you have a dashboard to show results from wikipedia, yahoo, and google all in one place?  *yawn*  I'm supposed to sign in to a service for that?  Build that in to the next web browser and I'll take a look at it. 

Well, I really just wanted to make fun of Goongee and Haabaa and say Master Beta, so I think my work here is done.