Yahoo Adds Voice Commands to Web Search on Phones
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LAS VEGAS/SAN
FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc on Wednesday unveiled new features to
make Web search easier and more relevant to mobile phone users, the
latest step in its battle with Google Inc in the next frontier for Web
use.
Yahoo mobile chief Marco Boerries said his company aims to make
millions of Web links more accessible on phones, by tapping deeper into
the sites and by enabling consumers to use voice commands to search the
Web.
"This is really a sea change. This is not about simple Web links any
more," Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo's Connected Life
unit, said in an interview ahead of a keynote speech at CTIA, the
annual U.S. wireless showcase.
Yahoo unveiled the latest version of its oneSearch service as it
forges ahead with its mobile Internet strategy in the face of an
unsolicited Microsoft Corp takeover bid.
The Sunnyvale, California-company has struck deals with dozens of
operators around the world to reach a potential 600 million phone users
with mobile Internet services. Yahoo has said it is targeting deals to
reach 750 million users.
Yahoo is opening up the way it finds search results for mobile phone
users by allowing publishers to provide highly categorized information
that gives them more control over what content users see and how it is
presented.
This lets Yahoo understand more about the information inside a link rather than just the link itself, Boerries said.
This open approach is, in technical terms, a form of semantic Web
search, which essentially means that computers recognize and categorize
the type of information that appears on a Web page. It will be ready
for network operators to offer to mobile phone customers this quarter,
he said.
