Any iPhone users who felt ignored by Yahoo now have little reason left to complain. Yahoo Search for iPhone has been announced, and it incorporates roughly everything in the company’s repertoire.
Ryan Grove, a web developer, writes that he was asked to “bring the full Yahoo! Search experience – including SearchMonkey, Search Assist, shortcuts, and other awesome Yahoo! Search features – to the iPhone with as few compromises as possible.” Together with Tom Chi and Jeremy Hubert, he seems to have achieved that goal.
Ryan Grove
“Movie showtimes, weather, local results, breaking news, Flickr photos, and other useful Yahoo! Search shortcuts are now at your fingertips,” according to Grove. So long as users are signed into their Yahoo accounts, their mobile and desktop SearchMonkey modules should look identical. And Search Assist acts as a time-saving auto-complete tool.
The main problem – and it’s a big one – is that Google’s been playing the iPhone app game for some time now. Google’s interface for the iPhone was even named as a main factor in its winning a Future Mobile Award for mobile search. Yahoo’s smaller desktop market share is enough of a disadvantage without a late start adding to the company’s problems.
Ah, well. A hat tip goes to Don Reisinger, and we’ll just have to see if Yahoo Search for iPhone can prove as popular as the offering from Mountain View.
