Yahoo releases search tools for iPhone, Android apps

From InfoWorld: Yahoo wants to help people find mobile applications and information about them.

On Thursday, the company is unveiling a feature in its search engine called App Search, as well as application search tools for Android and iPhone devices called AppSpot.

Both the new App search feature and the mobile search tools can be used to seek applications for iPhone and Android devices, although the company expects to expand that scope in the future.

For now, Yahoo has indexed the mobile application catalogue of the Android Market and of the Apple App Store, and is convinced that it can do a better job than the search tools of those two online shops.

"Their search is good, but it's not best-of-breed," said Shashi Seth, Yahoo's senior vice president of search.

Finding information about mobile applications, like descriptions, ratings, reviews and recommendations, is at a rudimentary stage similar to web search in the mid-1990s, Seth said.

The way Yahoo sees it, many people today struggle to find the right mobile application among the hundreds of thousands available for Android and iPhone devices.

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