It was an eccentric English writer named Charles Colton who coined the now famous quote, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” Google must now really be flattered as erstwhile rival Yahoo has overhauled its mobile search site, now bringing the most relevant results (apparently, previously, they’ve been giving us irrelevant ones?) and actionable results, just like what Google has been doing for the past years. This search overhaul is currently for mobile devices and for US users only.
If you suddenly started using Yahoo as your search on your smartphone or tablet, then you may have been a bit confused as it now looks a lot like Google, which is not necessarily a bad thing for the former. Vice President for Product Management Andrew Poon said that the search business is “an area of growth and continued investment” despite having been losing heavily to Google and even Microsoft’s Bing, which is the default search engine for Windows devices.
Context and location are the two major factors that they considered in this revamp, and it shows in how it looks and for the functionality as well. For example, if you’re searching for a specific restaurant, you don’t have to go through all the useless articles or sites, but instead brings you the map, contact information, online reservation (if any), and yes, some reviews as well.
Now we don’t know if this will have an effect yet on the market. Unlike Bing, which actually gives you rewards for using its search, there is not much incentive here, even though it is a major improvement from before. If it looks like and acts like Google now, why not just use Google which may be more convenient for your Android device? Well, Yahoo is hoping that even if you’re using a Google-powered smartphone, you’ll still make them your default search engine. Now, would you?
SOURCE: Yahoo
