Google News out of beta, Yahoo cedes No. 1 slot in search to Google.

Google News, a very nice news aggregator, has emerged from beta after 3 years as described by its creator's blog. The site is very easy to use, and has the classic Google absence of advertising and pop ups that are so prevalent at the MSM sites, and its competitors. In an interesting article in the Seattle PI, a Yahoo! representative concedes that Google won't be dethroned as the market leader in search, at least not by Yahoo! It is interesting to see the number of new search engines emerging to challenge Google, especially for advertising dollars driven in ways that reduce click fraud, yet the number 2 player in the market place is content to remain so. Or is this a smokescreen?