yahoo axis

Axis, Yahoo's "new kind of browser" that launched yesterday, is an attempt to do something noble and important. Yahoo has taken away the search results page, the intermediate step where a search engine makes most of its money, in order to get the user straight to where she's going. Axis is a gamble to redefine search. Unfortunately, Yahoo lost the bet.

On paper, Yahoo played Axis just right. It skipped trying to compete with the dominant desktop browsers, instead offering a plug-in that works on all of them. That enables Axis users to extend their browsing habits to the Axis apps for iPad and iPhone, which is much less settled territory. Mobile and tablet browsing is the next frontier, and Yahoo is wise to focus the next stage of its business there.

Axis tries to reinvent search by getting rid of the results page. When you search, it displays a bar next to the page you're on with little previews of the sites it finds. This is supposed to be faster and more convenient, since the user can just look for the right preview, tap it once and load the page.