14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo's caused quite a fuss with its new "browser" Yahoo Axis, particularly over the fact that Yahoo launched a browser. But that's not really true, especially on the desktop. All that Yahoo did was launch an HTML5 search app that can be installed as an extension in Chrome and Firefox but that works with other HTML5 browsers as well.
On the iPad and iPhone, Yahoo Axis use Safari's engine WebKit to do all the rendering, so it's really just a search app, like all the rest.
That said, Axis is actually quite interesting. It's especially interesting on the iPad where the visual previews for search results work great.
Granted, Yahoo is not the first to offer search previews, Google Search offers Instant Previews on the desktop and on the mobile site previews work similarly to how they work in Axis, but Yahoo does it better.
For certain types of searches, those that you'd do on a table more, visual previews work better than snippets of text and links. But not for all.
What's more, Yahoo doesn't have visual previews for most websites, just the top ones so you'll be seeing text results quite a lot, though displayed vertically instead of horizontally.
But Axis has other interesting features, like the ability to sync bookmarks or even open tabs between devices.
This ability is quite interesting and Axis has the advantage of covering several devices and platforms that no other browser does. This is because it works on the iPhone and the iPad, but also with almost all desktop browsers on all platforms.
There is a home screen as well, where you can save your favorite sites or pages you mean to read later so you can have them ready on whatever device you want.
Overall, this is probably not enough to get most people to start using Yahoo Axis regularly, but some people might and they might find it quite useful.
But don't mistake this for a browser or even a productivity app. It's a search app with things bolted on. It's a good search app, especially on tablets, and has a few compelling features, but you'd still be using Yahoo (Bing). What's more, the app does have a tendency to prop up Yahoo products more often than not.