Yahoo! Bids! To! Own! Your! Smartmobe! Home! Screen!

Yahoo! is continuing its search for relevance, launching an Android environment that would let the ad-farmer run your smartphone's home screen. Pitched as a convenience thing, the app, called Aviate, was debuted in this Tumblr post. Product manager Mark Daiss writes that the aim of Aviate is to make “your phone smarter by …

[dan1980]

Having left my foil hat at home today, this actually sounds kind of . . . useful.

Of course, most phones have enough home page real estate to put icons for ALL your most used functions at once without the need for 'sponsored links' so it's not necessarily more useful than just organising it yourself.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo! should have called it Fellate! as the app seems to be designed to suck all the joy out of you.

[dan1980]

Actually, it's kind of a catch-22.

Any such application will either get it wrong too much to be reliable or, if it gets it right, will be privy to more personal information than you might want advertisers to have about you.

[GregC]

So it's basically Google Now, by Yahoo?

Or am I over simplifying? Because that's pretty much what it sounds like, and Now is pretty good already, especially given the very limited amount of information I let it see. I'm struggling to think of a reason I'd install a third party app to replicate existing functionality.

[sabroni]

Re: struggling to think of a reason....

To keep your data away from Google? (And give it to Yahoo!, not much of a choice but possibly the lesser of two evils...)

[Major Ebaneezer Wanktrollop]

I've been using for it around 9 months (in beta) and before Yahoo bought it. It's better looking by far than the standard Android screen and customisable in what you want on the home screen. As for the intelligent features - never taken any notice. They're a bit dumb.

[dotdavid]

I concur. I tried it for a while but the intelligent features were pretty limited, leaving the only useful bit the autocategorisation of apps.

Since then I've tried SmartLauncher instead which just has the autocategorisation of apps bit and that's working well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Piss! Off! Yahoo!

Like it sez

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Piss! Off! Yahoo!

Cool! It's like Noel Coward just started posting.

[Bottle_Cap]

All your phones are belong to us...? Looks handy but as previously stated doesn't do anything you couldn't do yourself at the cost of your data and yet more ads...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you surprised Guys?

Ms. Mayer is Ex-Google. Data slurping and ad-sell is in her DNA. Why do you expect anything otherwise?

Get real and move on. Nothing to see here. As mentioned in the article, Yahoo trying to find a relevance for themselves, this time in the mobile sphere. Thats all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why are you surprised Guys?

Yeah, keep giving all your marketable data to Google please!! Thank you!

[Stumpy Pepys]

Seeing as Facebook Home died on its arse, why does Yahoo! think this will succeed?

[TeeCee]

Because corporate strategy is usually insane and insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

[I ain't Spartacus]

I'm disappointed.

What are Yahoo! marketing thinking? There's no exclamation mark in the name, it's pronouncable (if rubbish) and an actual word.

Clearly they should have gone for: Aviate! - or - Av8

[Euripides Pants]

"offering intelligent information"

I don't think these people know what intelligent means...