iOS users have their favorite friend Siri, while Android users mostly have their very own Google Now. Even Windows has its own Cortana, not up to par yet with the two, but slowly getting there. Yahoo is now saying, “Wait, wait, we’d like to join this party too!” CEO Marissa Mayer has indicated that they are indeed coming up with their own digital assistant that will be available as an app for mobile devices.
During a conference call earlier this week, the main purpose being to report on Yahoo’s first quarter earnings, Mayer confirmed that they are currently working on a new product that will be a personal assistant and at the same time mobile search assistant, just like Siri, Google Now, and Cortana. Beyond that, she did not give much details, but sources are saying that the project code is Index and that it will be a smartphone app. Since advertising engineers are also reportedly working on the project as well, we can expect that this will be ad-supported.
The two people supposedly heading this project are Jeff Bonforte and Peter Monaco, both of whom are former heads of one of Yahoo’s acquisitions, Xobni, an app that organized the inboxes of Microsoft Outlook. A recent acquisition by Yahoo is an Android launcher called Aviate (now Yahoo Aviate) that predicts which apps you’ll be using during certain situations. This might be “practice” for Yahoo with what they’re trying to achieve with this new project.
Mayer believes that their distinct advantage over their rivals is that they have email users that have been with them for 20 years now, so they have a lot of data to mine in terms of learning a person’s behaviour, as compared to Google’s “young” email base, where mostly they have 10-year old accounts. We’ll look forward to updates in the next few months regarding “Index” and see what Yahoo will eventually come up with.
VIA: Business Insider, Android Police
