
Yahoo to Launch "Chrome Killer" Tonight - antr
http://www.launch.co/blog/yahoo-to-launch-chrome-killer-tonight.html
======
btipling
It's not a "Killer". The title is the worst kind of link bait. It doesn't
replace Chrome in any shape or form. There's nothing Yahoo! has said to
justify this title. Horrid submission to HN.

~~~
wavephorm
Yahoo is a dying company, quickly converting itself into a patent troll, and
suing competitors in a desperate attempt to stay relevant long after they are.
This is a dying company. I have ZERO respect for any employee of a company
like this.

The executives of this company that decided to become a patent troll should go
hang themselves, or at least quit their jobs and save some semblance of self-
respect.

~~~
kamaal
>>This is a dying company. I have ZERO respect for any employee of a company
like this.

And I would have ZERO respect for any employee who runs from a company just
because its dying. Those are the last kind people I would hire, because those
are the classic cases of what Zed Shaw describes are the kind of people who
work for successful companies, and not to work to make the company successful.

Rats are first ones to run from a sinking ship. And employees who generally
leave first during the times of crisis are generally people who have no
qualities to be war time leaders, who can steer and motivate their teams in
difficult times. I would never trust such people with any kind of work that is
important.

When I see such people, I often wonder what are they actually worth? If its
for money and nothing else, what is the point in really hiring such people for
important work? How can they even be trusted when to handle responsibilities
in times of crisis, which forces them to quit? Its easy to continue work when
things are normal in a successful flow. But its take a lot more heart and
character to last through tough and difficult times.

When I see people who want to join Google, or Facebook or <anything> just
because its successful, and somebody else has already done the base work to
make the company successful. I see people who just like to be part of somebody
else's success without contributing nothing much to it.

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harryf
The "move seamlessly across devices" feature has me wanting to try it at
least. If it was possible to start typing a HN post on your phone then finish
on your laptop, for example, that would be really cool.

But a chrome killer? I doubt it. To kill chrome you'd need a far more
compelling use case.

To me the biggest problem on the web right now is there's too much to read. In
fact there's an Amazon killer here too. It's never been so easy to own a lot
of books but it's getting harder and harder to read them.

~~~
birch25
With ebook readers on your computer, tablet, phone, and dedicated (and cheap)
ereaders I don't see how anyone could say that books are getting harder to
read. It may be so easy to buy them that we are developing backlogs, but that
is a problem of self control.

There is a ton to read on the web right now. The current solution is to use a
service like Instapaper, Readability, or Pocket that saves articles and
renders them in a pleasurable format to read later. If you want that built
into the browser, look no further than Safari which introduced "Reading List"
in version 5.0 (the new version in Mountain Lion has offline reading as well).
Opera has also announced they will have a feature like this in their next
major release.

There's always room for disruption. Firefox used customizability and standards
compliance to disrupt IE's market. A few short years later Chrome used speed
to disrupt IE and Firefox's market to become the most used browser in he
world. Who will be next? I don't know, but I'm skeptical that Yahoo is the
company who will do it.

~~~
harryf
> With ebook readers on your computer, tablet, phone, and dedicated (and
> cheap) ereaders I don't see how anyone could say that books are getting
> harder to read.

I expressed myself badly. The act of reading has never been so easy I agree.

What I meant was when was the last time you finished a book? Or just got
something meaningful out of a book? How about when you bought a book and never
even started it?

The problem being there's an oversupply of excellent books all just a download
away but never enough time to read them.

This is a problem we should be solving.

~~~
jsolson
Make time.

I finish a few books per month. My parents manage to read a couple books per
week (and managed it when I was a good deal younger and they were both working
40+ hour weeks).

Read on the bus. Read on the can. Read before going to bed. There's plenty of
time for reading, even if you've got an otherwise busy and active life.

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mey
Interesting, trying to download it, results in it trying to load up a Google
Chrome extension...

Edit: Looks like it exists as a plugin for Firefox and Chrome, based on my
testing with Opera...

Edit2:

Chrome Extension

Firefox Extension

Safari Extension

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MichaelGG
The video on axis.yahoo.com says it's a plugin for "your favourite browser"
and shows the icons for Chrome, IE, FF, and Safari. So, it doesn't seem to be
a separate browser.

Also, the Axis logo looks nearly identical to Adobe's, apart from the colour.

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_feda_
You have to remember that when chrome was released it was clearly an attempt
at a firefox killer, but obviously it hasn't killed firefox, and google never
realistically expected it to do so. Google chrome has done very well at
sequestering market share from firefox and internet explorer, but chrome is a
google product, and lives up to the software standards that we've come to
expect from them. I expect this effort from yahoo to be a token addition to an
already crowded market.

~~~
jsolson
> You have to remember that when chrome was released it was clearly an attempt
> at a firefox killer

Really? I thought it was a (successful) attempt at building a good browser
that addressed the needs of a wide variety of users. I didn't realize it was
out to kill anything. That just seems barbaric.

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joshu
in 2006 i tried to convince Jerry that Yahoo needed to ship a browser.

it only took six years for it to sink in, i guess.

~~~
Jare
From the looks of it, you're in for a few more years of waiting. This thing is
a plugin, not a browser.

~~~
joshu
Well, I never thought they were going to write their own renderers or
whatever. I thought it would be FF with the chrome heavily redone in a manner
that made sense.

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thezilch
Nice, fast, mobile aware, and social... fantastic.

    
    
      <!DOCTYPE HTML> 
      <html dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> 
      <head> 
      <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> 
      <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1"> 
     
      <meta property="og:title" content="Yahoo! Axis" /> 
      <meta property="og:type" content="product" /> 
      <meta property="og:url" content="http://axis.yahoo.com" /> 
      <meta property="og:image" content="http://l.yimg.com/mk/micro/img/axis-icon64.png" /> 
      <meta property="og:site_name" content="Yahoo! Axis" /> 
      <meta property="fb:admins" content="100000203733930" /> 
     
      <title>Yahoo! Axis</title> 
      <body></body> 
      </html>

~~~
joshu
the admin maps to <http://www.facebook.com/gaurav.malhotra.75>

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swang
Here is a better article detailing what Yahoo Axis is.

[http://techland.time.com/2012/05/23/yahoos-axis-visual-
searc...](http://techland.time.com/2012/05/23/yahoos-axis-visual-search-an-
ios-browser-and-no-ten-blue-links/)

~~~
bpeebles
"Yahoo says ... is contemplating putting Axis on other mobile platforms such
as Android."?!

I can understand not supporting Linux at launch (but not forever). I can't
understand only targeting iOS and then publicly saying you're not even
planning on doing Android. Just that you're "contemplating" it.

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zengr
One year old (May 23, 2011) video: [http://screen.yahoo.com/introducing-axis-
from-yahoo-for-your...](http://screen.yahoo.com/introducing-axis-from-yahoo-
for-your-desktop-29344706.html)

~~~
netfire
Got to love those over-the-top effects. Glass-breaking, plants bursting out of
the ground, etc.

Don't really see Yahoo! being able to execute on this sort of thing though. I
haven't seen anything really awesome from them for years.

------
famousactress
Anyone else notice that at 0:12 in the video it appears that "how to make
chloroform" is in the top few results when typing "how"?

<http://imgur.com/CVtff>

------
TomGullen
Chrome killer sounds, well, rather ambitious. IE killer was ambitious enough
back in the day, and that browser had serious flaws.

------
kin
<http://axis.yahoo.com/> doesn't work for me. Is anyone else having issues?

~~~
ChuckMcM
One of the comments noted the video was dated a year ago. Could be a mistake
on the video, could be that this project never made it out of the silo last
year and was just discovered. Or it could be that it won't be live until
tomorrow.

Like others I found the headline amusing because it doesn't seem like a
credible strategy to 'attack' Google by replacing their browser.

------
jongalloway2
Yahoo Axis shows up in iTunes: [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yahoo!-axis-a-
search-browser/...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yahoo!-axis-a-search-
browser/id506520874?mt=8)

I have no iDevices so no idea what it does.

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lewisflude
* Checks calendar * hang on, it's not April 1st! I do have to say, after having a brief romance with Yahoo! in my teens, I'm looking forward to them doing something like this. As a web developer, if this becomes popular, and causes problems for me, there will be hell to pay.

Come to think of it, I'll probably just ignore it if it causes me any issues.

You've been warned Yahoo!

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bwb
why thought? They just don't get it, why are they doing these things?

Yahoo has no mission, they have crazy micro departments and no clear focus for
picking winners / goals.

~~~
waterlesscloud
You could very easily say the same thing about Google. People do, in fact.

Not that I expect this to in any way be good.

------
BiWinning
Yahoo is a well managed company on the forward curve of web technology and I
look forward to something that will kill the bloated and poorly backed
software that is Google Chrome.

~~~
phene
Poe's Law at work here.

~~~
OriginalSyn
Naw that's just classic sarcasm.

~~~
phene
Given the guy's karma, I don't know...

~~~
AsylumWarden
I would love to have his karma. I screwed up with my first post and despite my
best efforts I haven't moved up. Maybe if I show kindness to the new yahoo
browser my karma will improve?

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gcb
Wait, where in the press release they even mention chrome???

It's launch.co dumb headline.

~~~
magicalist
And unfortunately that puts any conversation about it in a pretty moronic
place. I'm skeptical, but more fluid and seamless search-browsing and device-
to-device experiences could have at least inspired some decent conversations.
Now we get "who is yahoo kidding?"

------
phene
"Chrome Killer" from Yahoo... That's cute.

~~~
quink
Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha! Yahoo is going to dethrone the world's newly most
popular browser.

By putting in what are effectively iGoogle, Chrome Sync and Google
Instant/Suggest in a new Webkit fork?

Good luck with that project. Never mind the awful name. I think a bigger
market share would prefer Yahoo! Allies over Yahoo! Axis.

And the logo looks like something Saul Bass would have done for an
agricultural concern in 1978.

Edit: It's a browser extension. Well, absolutely no one will use it especially
now.

~~~
agosnell
Shape of the logo reminds me of Adobe.

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necenzurat
The Fb:admin is <http://graph.facebook.com/100000203733930> and
<https://www.facebook.com/gaurav.malhotra.75> anyone know who is he?

------
wavephorm
Brought to you by a patent troll that thinks it invented the concept of a news
feed, and is suing every web publisher that displays new information in a
list.

Who can possibly take this company seriously anymore?

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tubbo
yeah i feel like they dropped the ball on not making this just an extension
for every other browser, and possibly a standalone for those looking to jump
ship from their current browser. increase market share, decrease
fragmentation. win/win...

~~~
Estragon
Um, it _is_ an extension for every browser.

    
    
      On your computer, axis is a plugin that easily works with
      your favorite browser.  As you can see, Axis is at the 
      bottom of your screen and stays with you as you browse the 
      web.
    

Starts at 1:25 in the video.

