The search for better search is far from over, and despite the threat of a takeover from Microsoft, Yahoo doesn't appear to be giving up anytime soon. Yahoo plans to continue its Open Search Platform by throwing its support behind a number of semantic web standards.

According to TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington, Yahoo's decision could revolutionize the way we search for and find information on the web.

"It means we can expect the web to get itself organized, in a hurry," Arrington wrote. "At stake is a significant amount of traffic from Yahoo search, and anyone else that may choose to build applications on top of this data."

The vision of W3C director Tim Berners-Lee, a semantic web is one that would arm computers with a better ability to read and understand the content of web pages.

"I have a dream for the web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the web -- the content, links and transactions between people and computers," Berners-Lee said. "A semantic web, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines."

Theory aside, officials at Yahoo believe they can revolutionize search by supporting the semantic web in very practical ways. Yahoo director of product management Amit Kumar pointed to LinkedIn as an example of how a semantic web could be a game-changer.

"With a richer understanding of LinkedIn's structured data included in our index, we will be able to present users with more compelling and useful search results for their site," Kumar told TechCrunch.

As for competing with Google, it's too early to tell if Yahoo can close the gap. However, since his return, it's clear that founder Jerry Yang has made it a priority to open up the company's products to users, publishers and outside developers. Given the way Google wrestled dominance away from Yahoo with the emergence of what many call Web 2.0, Yahoo's decision to embrace outsiders -- albeit in short movements -- is probably a good thing. 

One interesting byproduct of Yahoo's new found openness came yesterday when it joined Google's OpenSocial program. Yahoo is expected to continue to make similar moves toward openness as looks for a ways to compete with Google.