- Android Police has posted images and a video clip showing what it says is a Yahoo (YHOO) voice assistant app under development. The app, which can be accessed via an icon that appears on home screens, relies (like Google Now) on user data to push time/location-sensitive information.
- The app also supports (like both Google Now and Apple's Siri) voice recognition input and the ability to send quick messages, and (on Android phones) can be accessed through an icon that appears on home screens.
- As Android Police observes, Yahoo recently acquired natural language-processing startup SkyPhrase, whose technology could be quite useful for creating a voice assistant app.
- If/when the app launches, Yahoo could leverage the volumes of user data it has to push relevant information to users. At the same time, Google has even more user data, and both Google Now and Siri have big head starts in both reeling in users and optimizing their services based on activity.