Do you think Yahoo can make a comeback in search? Let us know in the comments.

The company’s “Search Alliance” with Microsoft leaves plenty of questions about the company’s future in search, as well, but there are rumors going around that the deal may not play out as planned. We spoke with Kevin Ryan, the CEO of Motivity Marketing, who says that based on rumors floating around in the industry, the search alliance between Yahoo and Microsoft might not make its projected 10-year tenure.

“There’s a lot of rumors in the business that [it] isn’t going well, and that it’s not going to make the full-decade run,” he tells us. “So, if I’m Yahoo, I’m spending a little bit of money trying to figure out how we can get that search bucket going.”

When the agreement was reached, Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan spoke with us about the impact of the deal on each company. “[A] big win for Microsoft, a lot of questions for Yahoo,” he summarized.

“Yahoo effectively threw in the towel with search,” says Ryan of the alliance.

Despite the many reports on the struggling search alliance, David Pann, the General Manager of Search Networks at Microsoft, spoke with us last year and pointed out that the companies had already experienced success, even in its early stages.

“It’s easy to say, ‘Okay, well, you didn’t do this, you didn’t that – it’s a failure,’” Pann explained. “I don’t think of that. I think that, given where we are, and given the complexity of the relationship… we’re actually making very good progress.”

However, if the rumors are true and Yahoo does pull out of its agreement with Microsoft, the company will have to begin thinking about search again. The only other option would be to sell its search business completely.

According to Ryan, there are several instances that could be credited as catalysts for Yahoo’s downward sprial, but he believes its Panama search ad platform played a large role in beginning the downfall. Panama was Yahoo’s attempt to monetize search, as Google did, but instead, Ryan says it was an “abject failure” for Yahoo.

Ryan compares Yahoo’s current situation to what happened with Ask. The former search engine pulled out of the search industry in 2010 and has now transformed itself into a questions and answers service with an emphasis on mobile.

There are some who would likely consider Yahoo to be a former search engine as well. Yahoo is currently in the process of reinventing itself as a media company, but the company’s short-term leaders have had difficulty in making this transition. Ryan, however, doesn’t believe this particular attempt is the best option for Yahoo.

“Stop trying to reverse engineer HuffPo,” said Ryan, “and create something new.”

But, Yahoo’s performance as a media company has been nothing to shake a stick at, and for many, Yahoo’s homepage works very well as a portal to the Web. Just take a look at Yahoo’s realtime homepage view counter at any given day. So far today (at 8:30AM Pacific), the page has already seen over 73 million views .

Still, Ryan tells us that Yahoo should reinvest in its core business, in which search plays a very big role. With a renewed focus in this area, he believes Yahoo could better serve consumers and also advertisers, which could help it get back on the right track.

Ryan told us there could be opportunities for Yahoo in terms of social development. Both Google and Bing have yet to completely succeed in social, which leaves an open door for Yahoo. He believes that a renewed focus on search combined with the opportunities in social could help to begin to turn Yahoo around. In addition, Ryan would like to see Yahoo make drastic changes internally in order to streamline its processes and improve its culture.

“I hope that the change that Yahoo makes will be very internal,” he said. “I hope that the culture internally will become much more positive, but we’ll see.”

At this point, Ross Levinsohn is Yahoo’s interim CEO. Although some people believe he will become the permanent CEO, Yahoo has not indicated any official word for who its next leader will be.

It’s inevitable that changes will happen at Yahoo in the coming months, but what they will be and whether or not they will be effective in saving the company are both still in question. On the positive side, Yahoo was able to finally reach an agreement with Alibaba Group. The $7 billion deal will require Yahoo to sell back half its stake in the Chinese company, but it brings resolution to one of its many problems.

Do you think search should play a significant role in Yahoo’s future as a company? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Actually, it would probably be more accurate to say that Yahoo wants to compete in news reading, browsing and search all from one app – Axis, which it introduced this week.

In a blog post today, Yahoo announced that it’s shutting down Livestand, its competitor to the popular iPad news reader app Flipboard. The reason it’s shutting down? Consolidation.

“As announced during our most recent earnings call, we’ve decided to discontinue or consolidate a number of products across Yahoo!’s technology platforms over the course of 2012,” says the post from Regan Clark. “Platform consolidation enables us to put many Yahoo! properties onto common key platforms and technologies to make everything more scalable and nimble. And when we discontinue products, it will be so that we can focus on opportunities where we lead and where we can create the most meaningful experiences for people using our products, and for our partners, developers and advertisers. One of the first decisions we’ve made along these lines is to discontinue our personalized digital newsstand app, Livestand for iPad.”

Keep in mind that there is a heavy focus on pushing Yahoo content in the new Axis app. Search results (or at least suggestions) have been suggested to heavily favor Yahoo content (Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo News, etc.). Of course Yahoo Trends are front in center in the app.

“We have learned a lot from Livestand and are actively applying those insights toward the development of future products that are better aligned with Yahoo!’s holistic mobile strategy,” says Clark. “We are pivoting to a mobile-products-first development model (check out Yahoo! Axis as a great example of this) and there’s no doubt that one of the biggest, if not THE biggest, priorities for us is to innovate for the mobile user, whether they’re using feature phones, smartphones or tablets – or iOS apps, Android apps or mobile web browsers, for that matter.”

Yahoo only announced Livestand in February 2011. It’s surprising to see it go so soon. I’m guessing Axis will be the major area of focus as far as Yahoo’s mobile strategy goes, for the foreseeable future.

Microsoft and Yahoo! are almost tied for the #2 spot, while Facebook, AOL and Amazon round out the top six. comScore reports that general web traffic regarding news sites was up in April, and also noted that sites relating to beauty and style had also gained popularity. Jeff Hackett, executive VP of comScore states, “The general news category reached an all-time high in April, reaching 5 out of 6 U.S. internet users during the month.”

General news sites were up 12% in April at 183 million hits, and Yahoo! News came in at #1, with 89.1 million viewers. HPMG came in second, and CNN came in third, with 59.4 and 57.4 million hits respectively.

As for the top 50 ad focus ranking, Google Ad Network saw 204 million unique visitors, with a 92.2% reach, taking the top spot. Interestingly, Facebook came in at #16, with 158 million visitors, reaching 71.6%

During the aftermath of Facebook’s IPO ordeal, investors have been weary of Facebook’s inability to monetize its ad content, especially for mobile, the mode of which more and more users are adopting to access the site. Still, Facebook’s April ad focus ranking isn’t so bad realistically – Sure, Google’s Ad Network blows it out of the water, but Zuckerberg and Co. still compete with the likes of Yahoo! Sites, and Microsoft. Though, these rankings don’t really define actual results – GM recently pulled its ad campaign from the social network, and on a much smaller level, a New Orleans pizza joint getting its start was unable to sell even one pizza using Facebook ads.

A smartphone can help take some of the stress out of visiting such cities. After all, you’re carrying a map of pretty much every place in the world in your pocket, and there are dozens upon dozens of apps designed to help tourists find what they’re looking for. What most of these apps don’t help you with, though, is time management. They may tell you how long it will take you to get from Chicago’s Sears Willis Tower to the Adler Planetarium, but they don’t tell you much about how long it will take you at the Planetarium.

That’s where the new TimeTraveler app from Yahoo! comes in. Unfortunately, TimeTraveler doesn’t quite do what the name implies: if you were expecting an app that turned your phone into the TARDIS, I’m afraid you’ll have to keep looking. No, what TimeTraveler does is help you plan your trek through a city by showing all the points of interest on a map, then telling you how long it will take you at each place.

When you open up the app you’re presented with a selection of 29 of the most famous cities in the world. We’ll use Boston as an example, since that’s one of my favorite cities to visit:

Once you’ve picked your city, you set a start point, an end point, and the amount of time you have. Let’s say you’ve just finished lunch at Cheers (which is right across the street from Boston Common), and you want to make it to Fenway Park for an evening baseball game. You want to be there in plenty of time to get your beer and your hot dog and get to your seat by the time the game starts, so you give yourself 5 hours:

Once you put in all the details, TimeTraveler plots your route and picks attractions along the way that you can do in the amount of time you’ve allotted. Once it’s done, it shows them to you in a handy list:

If you tap the round icon at the bottom, you’re can check out a map that shows your start point, end point, and the attractions TimeTraveler has picked for you. You can also identify other points of interest along the way, including restaurants and hotels. You can also see pictures that others have taken of attractions in your area.

From the list view, tapping on any of the attractions on your route brings up a card that shows some basic details of the attraction. Details include business hours, location, and some information about why the place you’re going is famous. Of course, business hours are subject to change, and the owners are under no obligation to inform Yahoo! when that happens, so you should always double-check the hours of any place you plan to visit.

Though I have not, like Johnny Cash, been everywhere, man, I’ve done a fair bit of travelling in my time. I’ve often found myself in a new city feeling overwhelmed with the amount of stuff there is to do in the little bit of time I have. As such, I’ve used a lot of different apps for tourists. While they all have their pros and cons, there’s an awful lot of overlap in the kinds of things they do. Truth to tell, most of them don’t do a lot more for me than I can get just by using my iPhone’s built-in Maps app.

TimeTraveler, however, stands out from the crowd in a big way. Though it may not put a flux capacitor in my phone, it comes as close as it possibly can to the next best thing. It’s available today as a free download from the iOS App Store, where it’s currently at the top of the list of featured new apps. For more information, you can check out Yahoo’s TimeTraveler page.

Wait a tick, that “A” in Axis looks really familiar. Where have I seen it before? There’s another technology software company out there with an “A” in its logo that looks remarkably similar. They recently had a major launch of the newest version of their design suite. Oh right, it’s Adobe.

Comparing the two logos, it’s becomes immediately apparent that Yahoo took some “inspiration.” The only difference is that Yahoo uses its fancy “A” in the actual name of the brand, whereas Adobe uses its “A” as the logo.

Could you say that Yahoo outright stole the design? I don’t think so. It does bear some striking resemblance, but its looks different enough to hopefully avoid a lawsuit. I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if Yahoo accused Adobe of stealing their design since they seem fine with accusing Facebook and the Open Source community of infringing upon their patents.

The Adobe logo isn’t the only thing that the Axis logo seems to be taking inspiration from. Going more into the gaming side of things, you may have realized that the Axis logo seems to take inspiration from a popular gaming icon.

That’s the logo for Abstergo Industries, the antagonistic Templar organization from the Assassin’s Creed franchise. It’s not as close as Axis is to Adobe, but you can see the design inspiration in there as well. This now brings up the question of Ubisoft perhaps taking inspiration from Adobe for their game’s logo.

Regardless, I like all three logos. They all may seem similar, but they have enough differences to set themselves apart and create something unique. The reason that the Yahoo Axis logo is so appealing, however, is that it’s so unlike Yahoo. They now have an edge that they used to lack.

Do you like the new Yahoo Axis logo? Can you think of any other “A” logos that Axis seems to have taken inspiration from? I sure can’t think of any more, but I’m welcome to more ideas.

First, check out Yahoo’s video showing it off:

Now, let’s check out reality.

Having now played around with Axis for the iPad, iPhone and Chrome, I can tell you, this works much better as a mobile browser than as a Chrome add-on.

Chrome is already super fast at the search process. Axis slows it down. I’m finding that sometimes it even takes a long time just to load the search box. Then, if you click the search box, and start typing, you’ll find that you’re just adding on to the previous query. If you’ve already performed a search with the Axis search box, you’ll find that you have to take an extra step and get rid of the previous query, whereas if you just search from Chrome’s omnibox (the address bar), you can just click and type, searching without any hassle whatsoever.

I’m not sure this helps you “rip through the web,” as portrayed in the video above (though it’s funny that this web ripping is portrayed by a guy punching through glass screens).

Even if you’re a fan of Yahoo search, it’s actually easier and a better user experience to simply switch your default browser in Chrome to Yahoo, and continue to use the omnibox.

In addition, Axis adds another bar to the bottom of your browser, taking up more screen real estate. The ability to slide horizontally through search results hardly seems worth the trade-off.

Those are my first impressions. I don’t want to discourage you from trying it out yourself though. See what you think, and let us know.

While there have been some issues with the launch for the desktop, Yahoo Axis is live and available for the iPad and iPhone. The company put out a couple of videos demonstrating how it works on both devices:

The way it works is that if you have a webpage up, you can enter a web address to navigate, like any other browser. You can slide the page down, however, and reveal the search feature, where you can enter keywords and slide through results horizontally.

It works pretty much the same way on both the iPad and the iPhone, though after trying it on both, I have to say the tablet better lends itself to Axis. You could really say that about any mobile browsing experience though. Browsing is just better on a bigger screen. In fact, Adobe put out a study a couple weeks ago, finding that the share of website visits from tablets grew about 10 times faster than the rate of smartphones within two years of market introduction. About 80% of that traffic came from iPad devices, the company told WebProNews at the time.

One may wonder why Yahoo hasn’t released Axis as a full desktop browser, but it would be hard to enter the market and immediately compete with Chrome, Firefox and IE. Yahoo seems to be going for an area where Chrome isn’t yet widely available. If it can gain traction with iPhone and iPad users (and potentially Android users), perhaps a full desktop browser might stand a better chance.

Yahoo itself does have a huge audience. According to its realtime homepage counter, the Yahoo Homepage already has over 52 million views today (at 6:30AM Pacific). I’m guessing a good chunk of that audience has an iPhone and/or an iPad.

Of course, rumor has it that Chrome will be making its way to iOS.

Nik Cubrilovic, an entrepreneur, hacker, and blogger at New Web Order, revealed Yahoo’s mistake in a blog post. There, he warned users of the danger the leak posed and demonstrated how the vulnerability could be exploited by creating his own, harmless, forged extension. From the blog post:

The clearest implication is that with the private certificate file and a fake extension you can create a spoofed package that captures all web traffic, including passwords, session cookies, etc. The easiest way to get this installed onto a victims machine would be to DNS spoof the update URL. The next time the extension attempts to update it will silently install and run the spoofed extension.

Cubrilovic, after realizing what dangers the leak posed, quickly reported the mistake to Yahoo. According to The Next Web, Yahoo responded by pulling down the Chrome extension and blacklisting the leaked certificate key. The Next Web quoted a Yahoo spokesperson as saying:

Since discovering this issue we have immediately pulled down the chrome extension. We have blacklisted the exposed cert key with Google which has resolved the vulnerability. An updated chrome extension should be available within the next 30 minutes with this issue completely resolved. We take issues like this very seriously and are dedicated to working around the clock to ensure resolution. We apologize for any inconvenience.

A new Chrome extension is already available for Axis. The mishap only slightly tarnishes what was otherwise a smooth launch for Yahoo’s new mobile browser. There have been no reports of any malicious software spread using the vulnerability, so score one for Cubrilovic and the rest of the white hat hackers of the world.

(New Web Order via The Next Web)

On iOS devices, such as an iPhone, iPod, or iPad, Axis functions as a stand-alone browser. Once users log into Axis using a Yahoo!, Facebook, or Google account, they can browse, bookmark, save links for later, or search from the URL bar. It is these search results that Yahoo! is banking on to make Axis a success.

“Our search strategy is predicated on two core beliefs—one, that people want answers, not links and two, that consumer-facing search is ripe for innovative disruption,” said Shashi Seth, Yahoo!’s senior vice president of Connections. “With Axis, we have re-defined and re-architected the search and browse experience from the ground up.”

When users search using Axis, the search bar expands and displays thumbnail previews of search results. The results can be intuitively swiped through on a mobile device. Axis’ search function includes what Yahoo! is calling “instant answers,” which are answers to common questions or information such as movie times and local weather. In addition, by tapping a panel button users can switch the web search results to image search results, which are displayed in an easy-to-use, swipe-able grid.

Once users are done browsing on their mobile devices, the Axis plug-in for desktop browsers allows them to seamlessly continue where they left off. The plug-in looks similar to a toolbar, and sits in the bottom-left corner of corner of a browser as a small search box. Hovering over or clicking the search box expands Axis across the browser window, and searching provides the same “visual” search results as the mobile version. Signing into the plug-in will allow users to sync their search history, recent sites, saved articles, and bookmarks with the mobile versions. If users do not want to sync their search or browser history, Axis offers a “Local Only” mode in its privacy settings.

Another feature of Yahoo!’s new app is the Axis Home Page, which gathers all of a user’s bookmarks, read later links, and recently visited sites into an easily navigable interface. This is also the page where users can continue browsing with links to where they left off on other devices. The home page is fully customizable, allowing users to create folders and organize content as they desire.

With all of the turmoil it has experienced recently, Yahoo! needs a fresh outlook and new, creative ventures. The company lost many viewers for its video platform in April, causing some speculation that the company should shift its focus away from content and back to search, or even toward social. Though Axis provides many features that are already available in other mobile browsers, Yahoo! is at least taking a step toward a larger mobile presence, which is a step in the right direction.

The announcement came on Yahoo!’s corporate blog, where Yahoo! IPv6 Evangelist Jason Fesler stated the company’s commitment to ensuring “the long-term health and growth of the internet.” From the blog post:

The Internet is more than just a web address or an email address. Each time you visit www.yahoo.com, your computer looks up the proper number that will connect your web browser to our web server. Your computer does this for every single site it accesses.

The original Internet design is now running out of these unique numbers. Just like phone numbers, it is difficult to share the same number with several people (or several web sites). The main feature of IPv6 is to extend the Internet’s numbering system. This will allow more people, more devices, and more applications and web sites to join the Internet.

Yahoo is participating in World IPv6 Launch Day on June 6 along with other companies including Google, Bing, Facebook, Time Warner Cable, and Comcast. The event is organized by the Internet Society, a global initiative devoted to the open development and use of the web. The switch to IPv6 is needed because addresses for IPv4 will run out in the near future. Though most internet users with modern browsers will not notice any difference come June 6, Yahoo! has provided an IPv6 help page that includes a browser test.