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Yahoo Axis

axis.yahoo.com

109 pointsmxfh101 comments

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So it turns out they accidentally included their certificate private key inside the Chrome extension package:

https://twitter.com/nikcub/status/205489752684765185

Edit: just created a fake package and signed it:

https://github.com/nikcub/yahoo-spoof

Well done Yahoo, is it a cert they use on all their products / sites or just this one?

Wondering about the pain the revocation is gonna cause.

I don't know what kind of damage you can cause with this information, but I do think that posting this publicly was pretty unethical. You should have contacted Yahoo and then disclosed the information after.

EDIT: And here comes the downvotes. If you disagree with what I said then you really should post a response because you're preventing me from understanding why I might be wrong. If I knew your house door was unlocked, would it be okay for me to tell everyone in the world before I let you know?

He caused no damage whatsoever.

Yahoo caused the damage the second they put it up for download and someone downloaded it, at that point the cat was out of the bag and the certificate compromised.

When dealing with certificate signing and compromised private certs "Maybe no one noticed" is not a good enough response.

(I am assuming he used various methods of contacting Yahoo directly as well as publicly calling them out of course.)

EDIT: Thinking about it he MIGHT have caused damage because maybe no one else may have noticed before yahoo got the cert revoked, but that chances that no one else (blackhats for example) noticing before the cert was revoked are very small in my opinion.

I agree with you. I think it's unethical not to publicly announce this one. I understand that some bugs may be best treated in private, but compromised certificates can cause real havoc.

Ethics: +1

Has anybody confirmed that this works?

A lot of people here are negatively judging this product on the basis that it's from Yahoo. I think that's extremely premature and close-minded. Give it a chance will you?

I personally think the iPad app is fantastic. The ability to pull down search results and visually see their content was a great idea and I think this makes Axis much more appealing to use over Safari. I think I'm actually going to replace Safari with Axis for a while. It's a shame that you can't switch search engines, but I'm willing to give Yahoo search another shot.

On the other hand, I'm not really impressed with the Google Chrome toolbar. I think it's annoying to have something overlay my browser on every page I visit.

I haven't tested out the iPhone app yet.

Agreed. All the hate is unnecessary. Give it 5 minutes before pilling on Yahoo and the past decisions of it's board.

The idea of taking browsing with you is nice feature that Im suprised hasn't been implemented so well by other operating system / browsers. As such, I'd expect Windows8 and WindowsPhone8 to have tight integration and hopefully have features like this.

Automatic syncing of bookmarks and open tabs (among other things) is available on desktop and Android versions of Chrome. It's a feature I use frequently.

Me too, but to be fair, not many people get the chrome love (since it requires 4.0+)

It also works with all versions of Firefox and on older versions of Android.

Incidently the new beta of Firefox for Android is incredibly much better than the older Firefox too. And that works on older Android as well, of course.

You should really give Mozilla Sync a spin. Or Chrome's synchronization features. Axis really isn't doing anything new here.

I gave it a chance. Thought it was great.

Three Reasons why I uninstalled it:

1) It gave me useless trending search results every time I expanded the search bar (I don't care who won American Idol.)

2) It required a Yahoo account to create bookmarks (I understand this is probably necessary for them, but I would have liked it to just use my existing chrome bookmarks.)

3) I'm happy with Google and DuckDuckGo search results.

I would love this kind of tool if it integrated with my existing google account and allowed me to customise it further. Obviously that wouldn't be in Yahoo's interest.

Great opportunity for another developer without vested interests to take the idea and improve on it.

I've never uninstalled a browser plugin so quickly. It really is just what you think it is: a 2001-era search toolbar, except without the useful list of search results. Just thumbnails that tell you nothing about the result.

That's what rubbed me the wrong way about the video saying over and over "It completely redefines how you search the web!" No, not really.

It does completely redefine the way you search the web. It's changing search results from text to thumbnails. That will be totally useless in many circumstances, but could be useful in some.

That's not a redefinition. It's a modification. The hyperbole of "completely redefining" something is nothing short of presumptuous.

It completely tweaks the way you search the web.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SearchMe

I remember when this came out -- they spent a lot advertising this same "revolution", there were billboards and everything for it.

Ah, this will probably fail for the same reasons!

I see a search toolbar plus the Chrome-to-phone functionality (the iOs version of it). Moving along...

"Watch the Ad!"

Is there anything that shows how out-of-touch Yahoo better than the idea of wasting 1/3 of the above-the-fold space with something that warns people in advance it is nothing more than an ad?

Call it "Learn More" or something - anything but this. Didn't they A/B test it?

(Or maybe I'm part of the unsuccessful half of an A/B test. Hmm..)

Yep, group B here too. Coincidentally, I clicked on one video and not the other...

Group C

I stared at it, grunted a bit, then went off and made a cup of tea.

FWIW, Apple's iPad home page features a "Watch the TV Ad" button, although admittedly it's not quite as prominent as this.

Unlike the Axis page, you don't need to watch anything to find out what the product does.

People watch the Apple ads because they think they're "cool" or "interesting", not because they're trying to find out more about the product.

I would expect info videos in general to result in a much higher bounce rate, unless they are accompanied by a text-based explanation of what the product is.

So it's a new toolbar? Just what decade is Yahoo! living in?

Edit: What strikes me is how this is being billed: "A Chrome killer" and even the demo and ad spot use the phrasing "new browser": however this is not a browser. It may be a /browsing experience/ perhaps but it certainly doesn't stand to compete with Chrome mano-a-mano. Clearly the true target is search. But even then: has the world been waiting breathlessly to return to the days of toolbars?

"Chrome Killer" was just hyperbolic reporting. It doesn't look like Yahoo is billing this product as this.

On iOS it is actually a browser. You are being dismissive without even knowing the facts.

Additionally, Yahoo! has never called it Chrome killer.

I bet you on iOS it's a UIWebView.

Correct.

I guarantee this is the case. If their desktop effort at a "new browser" is a chrome extension, no way is the IOS version anything more than a wrapper around UIWebView.

It's going to perform terribly compared to Safari. As far as I know, Nitro is turned off for UIWebViews, which means JavaScript performance will be at 2006 levels. UIWebViews are for showing simple HTML content and maybe running some simple JS code, not for actual browsing.

Check the awesome terms + conditions:

http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/axis/en-us/

Wow, they fucked up. If someone uses axis now, can they legally just do whatever the hell they want?

I took this to mean that there is only one term of use for Axis right now and it is this: if they ever get terms, those terms will be displayed in that rectangular box with the rounded corners.

Everything else is fair game.

It might mean you can sue them if you cause some harm through use of their service. You have to hurry though!

Even better: You can't even read all the terms and conditions on the iPhone version. It stops scrolling at some point and just cuts off.

Well, on the bright side at least no-one will mind agreeing with them.

Perhaps it is a bold new form of ultra-permissive licence.

The advertisement is a bit of an overkill. I wish there was more text on the main page to tell me exactly what it is. The advertisement showed me a dude punching websites.

Yes, I couldn't figure out why he wants to break websites! One does not simply break the things that help him.

Cause he is MAXXXTREME!

I might be alone here, but the ability to do a search then page through the results without the normal "back, click new result" or opening multiple windows is a win for me.

The visual preview stuff isn't bad either, and makes it easy to determine is a site is "spammy" or not.

I just wish I had the functionality in the top search bar not through the bottom one. If this functionality was built into a forked version of Chrome I would switch to it in a heartbeat. Add in a way for other search engines to supply the results and I would be very happy.

The guy in the desktop video would be more convincing if only he would stop shaking his head "no".

Had to re-watch to see it, but you're right he is shaking his head, a classic unconscious behavior meaning he probably doesn't believe in it.

Maybe not - it might be derived from an Indian head waggle? That is much more neutral-to-positive than "no".

I thought the same thing, it was seriously distracting for me. Its kind of amazing that they gave him such little direction about his body language.

Yes, seriously it wouldn't hurt the guy to smile to actually make me even want to believe him.

I came here to say exactly this. Whoever was in charge of their video design failed majorly. The constant head shaking was very disconcerting to me and I felt like he had no confidence in his own product.

In the demo video, they show someone doing copy/paste in the browser window to enter information into the axis search bar. Why not add a contextual menu choice?

It is the small UX things like this that would really make me want to try it over just opening a new tab in chrome, typing something in and getting the results.

I noticed that too. Especially since chrome already has a "Search google for foobar" in the right click context menu.

When I worked at ask Jeeves, we thought a browser toolbar was how we were going to beat google, too. In 2001.

Nahh, you beat Google by atomising, securing and crowdsourcing search with open ranking algorithms that users can edit and share to serve as online agents. And you do it before Google, or at the very least better.

I like how it collapses quickly and tries to remain as lean as possible. But there is something fundamentally wrong - my browser already has a search box on top right..why did Yahoo think adding another one on bottom left would make me happy?

May a right side panel that reads from browser search box and completely collapses when I don't search would have been nicer.

The salesperson's habit of shaking his head 'no' while talking makes me not believe his statements. That, and the fact that he works for Yahoo . . .

Yeah, maybe it was made by interns brainstorming and was never really meant to be released to the public.

Man, the logo looks way too much like adobe! http://www.adobe.com/

Not supported for my operating system. (I run Linux.)

I thought this was a browser plugin?

Yahoo! never cared for Linux users. Remember the Linux version of Yahoo! Messenger? It lagged behind the Windows version so much before being quietly removed. Coincidentally, I never care much for Yahoo! anymore.

I think the point is he trying to make is that the plugin is for the browser which should have abstracted away all OS specifics.

I.e. this plugin should work on any OS that the browser does.

I'm asking around. It's all Web based, so I suspect that whatever limitations they ran into was because of browser extension issues.

I'm running it here in Firefox for Linux (Mint) and it's working fine.

The idea is good, an old-fashioned and dead company trying to disrupt in an attempt to recover.

The execution is terrible. If your product competitive advantage is being edgy and design oriented (rather than technical[1]) than I expect the end product and landing page design to be much, much more polished and professional.

[1] I'll accept the design if the disruption competitive advantage is technical (e.g. sci-fi AI that finds the exact answer to your search or question)

I like how the itunes reviews were clearly written by the marketing department.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yahoo!-axis-a-search-browser/...

The iOS version looks genuinely interesting. I bet they would have better success if they made it a real browser on desktop too, they could have used Chromium, like Rockmelt did.

Yahoo Axis isn't actually a browser its just a plugin which shows in the bottom left hand corner of your existing browser.

However despite the advanced knowledge regarding the launch of this, Yahoo! Axis software license and service terms[1] states:

"Terms will go here."

There's a screenshot which shows it incase they update the page[2].

[1] http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/axis/en-us/

[2] http://i.imgur.com/19asR.jpg

Shouldn't Yahoo focus on the products they are neglecting (i.e., Flickr) rather than introduce more products to then neglect?

Flickr has had 5 or 6 major updates this year, including a rebuilt uploader, redesigned photo page, a new justified view, social album browsing, integration of a new photo editor, and more. So, there is a lot of work being done at Flickr. See announcements @ http://code.flickr.com/blog/

If there's anything specific you'd like to see, leave a reply.

A much better iPhone application. I think there was a whole article about that.

I don't want to pile on, but after watching both videos on my Android the screen just goes black when it's done playing. I actually had to press my power button to get the screen back, unlock the phone and then backout from the popup player. I can't remember this happening to me before. Revolutionizing indeed.

This reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Homer is given the job of designing a new car for his brother's auto company.

I just wish Yahoo would wake up and realize that they don't have to compete with Google. They can be successful if they focus on being themselves. Sadly, it may be too late.

How can they expect to compete? Of the people who actually use yahoo products are they tech savvy enough to care about browsers? I imagine (maybe incorrectly) that yahoo users are mostly former employees and "normals" who use whatever their kids install on their computer

I fear this is too late for Yahoo. I don't think the "Google Killer" is going to be some incremental change in how search is done. It's far too late for that. It would have to be Earth-shattering, and I didn't feel anything shaking when I watched the demo video.

The "Desktop" download just installs a chrome extension that adds a yahoo toolbar at the bottom.

Everything is broken on that page for me, can't watch the videos or download the software.

I'm seeing more and more serious apps that are relying on browser extensions for a main part of their functionality.

It's a trend that I think has been gradually picking up speed over the years (as extensions have gotten a little easier to manage)

Anyone non-US is able to try the iOS version yet? In Canada here, the iPad app doesn't show up on the App Store and the direct link from Yahoo throws an error.

Has anyone found any keyboard shortcuts for using it?

Is there any other products currently that can sync your desktop to your mobile device? I haven't been too successful finding anything.

I found this to be adequate for my needs for now: tabhq.com. It basically syncs your chrome tabs with the web, and access the tabs anywhere by going on the site.

Chrome and the Chrome Beta on ICS have this built in.

Both Chrome and Firefox can sync between desktop and android.

Yahoo Axis for desktop is just a fancy toolbar that sits on the bottom instead of top. #justsayin

It seemed fine on the mobile (err, I mean on iOS), totally pointless on desktop though.

Maybe they can use Yahoo! Axis to screen future CEO qualifications...

What's the font on the landing page? Is that... Times New Roman?

My god - Yahoo at it's most clueless yet. The final death wail.

Did someone put makeup on him in addition to the dee-vee?

how to make chloroform… creepy. did anyone else notice that in the "ad"?

No thanks. :\

Yahoo? No thanks. Just go away, patent troll.

Axis countries during WWII.

Axis of Evil.

Axis Chemical, because early adopters are Batman fans.

Why this name? What positive associations does it have?

"a new way to access/axis the web".. they keep mentioning it in the demo video.

"If you have a question on your mind, just type in whatever the thing you want to axis!"

Ohh Yahoo..Why not release a Android version so that Android users can take it for a spin. Why such a behavior from a big company like yours?

Hi, I am Scott, and I am here to kill your family while I seamlessly trend around a scroll list of nothing on my iThing and the camera pans to a first plane of my face.

http://l.yimg.com/mk/micro/img/axis-icon64.png

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