News
Yahoo talks search
Tim Green Apr 4 2008, 11:15am
Yahoo wants mobile users to search the internet by talking to their handsets.
It has beefed up its mobile search offering with enhancements including voice-activated. It also plans to provide greater relevance by opening up its OneSearch app to third party publishers. By enabling publishers to integrate relevant content into the Yahoo! oneSearch results, it is more likely that consumers will be able to find exactly what they’re looking for.
The aim is to integrate content, simplify search input with Search Assist and voice-enabled search, and put search on the idle screen. Search Assist provides faster input with predictive text completion. For instance, a consumer searching for information about “Hillary Clinton” can just type “hil” and search assist will instantly suggest “Hillary Clinton” along with “Perez Hilton,” ”Hillary Duff” and the other most common search terms containing those letters.
To enable voice-activated searches, Yahoo has partnered with vlingo, a leading speech-recognition company. Finally, the idle screen search service will give users one-click access to Yahoo oneSearch and the internet. It is expected to roll out in Q2 2008.
