Yahoo! Live is not a combination of Microsoft Live Search and the Yahoo! search engine. That’s a little bit premature. No, Y! Live is Yahoo’s new streaming video service.

Yahoo! Live lets you use your webcam to stream live video to Yahoo!. So everything you find at Yahoo! Live are live video streams. There are no old clips of pets doing stupid things.

You can also combine several feeds into one session, turning the service into a virtual conference tool or chat room.

Moreover, users can set up profiles for themselves and get statistics of how many people are watching their feeds, the number of broadcasts etc.

The Y! Live Blog says that:

There is something intangible about a live performance – an excitement that you can’t replicate in pre-recorded format. Broadcast a performance, interact with your fans with video and chat, embed your broadcast anywhere - it’s all possible on Y! Live.

But not yet. The service crashed shortly after launch and is down at the moment of writing. Yahoo! warns that “Y! Live is a limited capacity release, so bear with us as and we may reach our limits in periods of high traffic.”

We can’t imagine the amount of bandwidth and processing power needed to run such a service. So what happens if it becomes truly popular?

It is a good idea, though, even if there are similar services available already.

See also Techcrunch: Yahoo Launches Live - A Live Streaming Video Service