∞ Yahoo Integrates 75,000 GetJar Apps into Mobile Search Queries
From MarketingVox
Yahoo is starting to test integration of its mobile search queries with the 75,000 plus apps offered by Get Jar. This move follows Google’s incorporation of iTunes into its mobile search in June, effectively inserting itself into the conversation between the customer and iTunes that Apple had previously claimed as its own. Neither play should come as any surprise to mobile search observers.
Mobile apps, in short, have become the latest tool by mobile search engines to boost their share in what is becoming an increasingly competitive market place. Beyond Mobile App Search That said, in the bigger picture competition for mobile search will yield far more robust functionality.
Scenarios include:
Passive and Intuitive. The day is coming when Google will be performing search on your behalf - without you having to type in the request, says CEO Eric Schmidt. (via the Wall Street Journal). “I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions,” he says. “They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.” For instance, someone walking down the street with their phone can - thanks the knowledge store Google has accumulated about this person - be reminded he or she needs milk and that there is a store nearby to pick it up. Or that the museum ahead has a gift shop with prints horse-racing posters, or that a historic event this person is now reading about took place on the next block.
Social Is Key. Admittedly Google hasn’t done this well, but the company is not through trying to crack the social puzzle. It will also link the intuitive search capabilities described above with the social element, according to Marissa Mayer, head of Google Search (via Fortune magazine). Say a person is planning a trip to Australia. A search pull up hotel, tourist spots, blog posts - and pose questions to a local friend about where to go shopping or dining in Sydney, without bothering the rest of your network. “Who you are, your context, what you are doing, who your friends are - if all of that comes in as the search input,” she says, “what is the right output?”
