Since I set up OpenSearch for this website, I’ve been noticing that some big names are missing this functionality. Read on to find out who, and get a fix to integrate their search with your browser.

Google? Surely, Not

Whilst their web search engine has OpenSearch support, a whole load of their other products are missing out.

This list is quite spectacular, I use most of these services every day:

• Google Maps
• Google Products
• Google Images
• Google News
• GMail
• Google Reader
• Google Video (YouTube has it)
• Google Groups
• Google Book Search
• Google Finance

As I said above, standard web search supports OpenSearch integration but, other than that, I could only find YouTube and Google Code with support. I didn’t check the projects currently in Google Labs as it’s fair to say that they are not finished and subject to interface changes.

Yahoo, You Too?

It’s not just Google that has a half-hearted support for OpenSearch. Its nearest rival, Yahoo, is guilty too.

• Yahoo Image Search
• Yahoo Video Search
• Yahoo Finance
• Yahoo Answers
• Yahoo Audio Search
• Yahoo Creative Commons Search
• Yahoo Directory Search
• Yahoo News
• Yahoo Shopping
• Yahoo Site Explorer
• Flickr

Yahoo’s Job Search does have OpenSearch support and del.icio.us uses its Firefox plugin to integrate with the browser (there’s no auto-discovery) on the website.

Microsoft Fail To Embrace & Extend OpenSearch

• Live
• Hotmail
• MSDN
• Microsoft.com

MSN has OpenSearch support but astoundingly, live.com does not, although live.com search is integrated with IE7+ by default.

Other Big Names

It’s not just the search enngines that are failing, check out this list:

• DMoz
• BBC & BBC news
• Fox News
• Craigs List
• MySpace
• Apple.com
• Adobe.com
• The Pirate Bay

And many, many more!

MMMeeja Will Shame The Big Players

I’ve discovered that it is possible to create the OpenSearch XML specification files for third party web sites and host them on a completely different web server, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do!

I will make OpenSearch support for up to five of the above, determined by your responses to this poll (RSS readers need to click here to see the poll):

Thanks for your time.