So it's a new toolbar? Just what decade is Yahoo! living in?
Edit: What strikes me is how this is being billed: "A Chrome killer" and even the demo and ad spot use the phrasing "new browser": however this is not a browser. It may be a /browsing experience/ perhaps but it certainly doesn't stand to compete with Chrome mano-a-mano. Clearly the true target is search. But even then: has the world been waiting breathlessly to return to the days of toolbars?
I guarantee this is the case. If their desktop effort at a "new browser" is a chrome extension, no way is the IOS version anything more than a wrapper around UIWebView.
It's going to perform terribly compared to Safari. As far as I know, Nitro is turned off for UIWebViews, which means JavaScript performance will be at 2006 levels. UIWebViews are for showing simple HTML content and maybe running some simple JS code, not for actual browsing.
How can they expect to compete? Of the people who actually use yahoo products are they tech savvy enough to care about browsers? I imagine (maybe incorrectly) that yahoo users are mostly former employees and "normals" who use whatever their kids install on their computer
The advertisement is a bit of an overkill. I wish there was more text on the main page to tell me exactly what it is. The advertisement showed me a dude punching websites.
I fear this is too late for Yahoo. I don't think the "Google Killer" is going to be some incremental change in how search is done. It's far too late for that. It would have to be Earth-shattering, and I didn't feel anything shaking when I watched the demo video.
I've never uninstalled a browser plugin so quickly. It really is just what you think it is: a 2001-era search toolbar, except without the useful list of search results. Just thumbnails that tell you nothing about the result.
It does completely redefine the way you search the web. It's changing search results from text to thumbnails. That will be totally useless in many circumstances, but could be useful in some.
I found this to be adequate for my needs for now: tabhq.com. It basically syncs your chrome tabs with the web, and access the tabs anywhere by going on the site.
Nahh, you beat Google by atomising, securing and crowdsourcing search with open ranking algorithms that users can edit and share to serve as online agents. And you do it before Google, or at the very least better.
I came here to say exactly this. Whoever was in charge of their video design failed majorly. The constant head shaking was very disconcerting to me and I felt like he had no confidence in his own product.
Hi, I am Scott, and I am here to kill your family while I seamlessly trend around a scroll list of nothing on my iThing and the camera pans to a first plane of my face.
In the demo video, they show someone doing copy/paste in the browser window to enter information into the axis search bar. Why not add a contextual menu choice?
It is the small UX things like this that would really make me want to try it over just opening a new tab in chrome, typing something in and getting the results.
Is there anything that shows how out-of-touch Yahoo better than the idea of wasting 1/3 of the above-the-fold space with something that warns people in advance it is nothing more than an ad?
Call it "Learn More" or something - anything but this. Didn't they A/B test it?
(Or maybe I'm part of the unsuccessful half of an A/B test. Hmm..)
I would expect info videos in general to result in a much higher bounce rate, unless they are accompanied by a text-based explanation of what the product is.
I took this to mean that there is only one term of use for Axis right now and it is this: if they ever get terms, those terms will be displayed in that rectangular box with the rounded corners.
The idea is good, an old-fashioned and dead company trying to disrupt in an attempt to recover.
The execution is terrible. If your product competitive advantage is being edgy and design oriented (rather than technical[1]) than I expect the end product and landing page design to be much, much more polished and professional.
[1] I'll accept the design if the disruption competitive advantage is technical (e.g. sci-fi AI that finds the exact answer to your search or question)
Yahoo! never cared for Linux users. Remember the Linux version of Yahoo! Messenger? It lagged behind the Windows version so much before being quietly removed. Coincidentally, I never care much for Yahoo! anymore.
A lot of people here are negatively judging this product on the basis that it's from Yahoo. I think that's extremely premature and close-minded. Give it a chance will you?
I personally think the iPad app is fantastic. The ability to pull down search results and visually see their content was a great idea and I think this makes Axis much more appealing to use over Safari. I think I'm actually going to replace Safari with Axis for a while. It's a shame that you can't switch search engines, but I'm willing to give Yahoo search another shot.
On the other hand, I'm not really impressed with the Google Chrome toolbar. I think it's annoying to have something overlay my browser on every page I visit.
Agreed. All the hate is unnecessary. Give it 5 minutes before pilling on Yahoo and the past decisions of it's board.
The idea of taking browsing with you is nice feature that Im suprised hasn't been implemented so well by other operating system / browsers. As such, I'd expect Windows8 and WindowsPhone8 to have tight integration and hopefully have features like this.
Automatic syncing of bookmarks and open tabs (among other things) is available on desktop and Android versions of Chrome. It's a feature I use frequently.
It also works with all versions of Firefox and on older versions of Android.
Incidently the new beta of Firefox for Android is incredibly much better than the older Firefox too. And that works on older Android as well, of course.
1) It gave me useless trending search results every time I expanded the search bar (I don't care who won American Idol.)
2) It required a Yahoo account to create bookmarks (I understand this is probably necessary for them, but I would have liked it to just use my existing chrome bookmarks.)
3) I'm happy with Google and DuckDuckGo search results.
I would love this kind of tool if it integrated with my existing google account and allowed me to customise it further. Obviously that wouldn't be in Yahoo's interest.
Great opportunity for another developer without vested interests to take the idea and improve on it.
I might be alone here, but the ability to do a search then page through the results without the normal "back, click new result" or opening multiple windows is a win for me.
The visual preview stuff isn't bad either, and makes it easy to determine is a site is "spammy" or not.
I just wish I had the functionality in the top search bar not through the bottom one. If this functionality was built into a forked version of Chrome I would switch to it in a heartbeat. Add in a way for other search engines to supply the results and I would be very happy.
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[ 6.3 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] threadEdit: What strikes me is how this is being billed: "A Chrome killer" and even the demo and ad spot use the phrasing "new browser": however this is not a browser. It may be a /browsing experience/ perhaps but it certainly doesn't stand to compete with Chrome mano-a-mano. Clearly the true target is search. But even then: has the world been waiting breathlessly to return to the days of toolbars?
Additionally, Yahoo! has never called it Chrome killer.
I remember when this came out -- they spent a lot advertising this same "revolution", there were billboards and everything for it.
It is the small UX things like this that would really make me want to try it over just opening a new tab in chrome, typing something in and getting the results.
Is there anything that shows how out-of-touch Yahoo better than the idea of wasting 1/3 of the above-the-fold space with something that warns people in advance it is nothing more than an ad?
Call it "Learn More" or something - anything but this. Didn't they A/B test it?
(Or maybe I'm part of the unsuccessful half of an A/B test. Hmm..)
I stared at it, grunted a bit, then went off and made a cup of tea.
People watch the Apple ads because they think they're "cool" or "interesting", not because they're trying to find out more about the product.
http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/axis/en-us/
Everything else is fair game.
Perhaps it is a bold new form of ultra-permissive licence.
The execution is terrible. If your product competitive advantage is being edgy and design oriented (rather than technical[1]) than I expect the end product and landing page design to be much, much more polished and professional.
[1] I'll accept the design if the disruption competitive advantage is technical (e.g. sci-fi AI that finds the exact answer to your search or question)
I thought this was a browser plugin?
I.e. this plugin should work on any OS that the browser does.
I personally think the iPad app is fantastic. The ability to pull down search results and visually see their content was a great idea and I think this makes Axis much more appealing to use over Safari. I think I'm actually going to replace Safari with Axis for a while. It's a shame that you can't switch search engines, but I'm willing to give Yahoo search another shot.
On the other hand, I'm not really impressed with the Google Chrome toolbar. I think it's annoying to have something overlay my browser on every page I visit.
I haven't tested out the iPhone app yet.
The idea of taking browsing with you is nice feature that Im suprised hasn't been implemented so well by other operating system / browsers. As such, I'd expect Windows8 and WindowsPhone8 to have tight integration and hopefully have features like this.
Incidently the new beta of Firefox for Android is incredibly much better than the older Firefox too. And that works on older Android as well, of course.
Three Reasons why I uninstalled it:
1) It gave me useless trending search results every time I expanded the search bar (I don't care who won American Idol.)
2) It required a Yahoo account to create bookmarks (I understand this is probably necessary for them, but I would have liked it to just use my existing chrome bookmarks.)
3) I'm happy with Google and DuckDuckGo search results.
I would love this kind of tool if it integrated with my existing google account and allowed me to customise it further. Obviously that wouldn't be in Yahoo's interest.
Great opportunity for another developer without vested interests to take the idea and improve on it.
The visual preview stuff isn't bad either, and makes it easy to determine is a site is "spammy" or not.
I just wish I had the functionality in the top search bar not through the bottom one. If this functionality was built into a forked version of Chrome I would switch to it in a heartbeat. Add in a way for other search engines to supply the results and I would be very happy.
However despite the advanced knowledge regarding the launch of this, Yahoo! Axis software license and service terms[1] states:
"Terms will go here."
There's a screenshot which shows it incase they update the page[2].
[1] http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/axis/en-us/
[2] http://i.imgur.com/19asR.jpg