Yahoo! Drops $10 Million to Create a Better Siri

Apple's Siri has some serious competition.

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Yahoo! and Carnegie Mellon University have teamed up to announce a five-year, $10 million partnership that will focus on speeding up mobile and personalization research to create a better user experience with smartphones.

This new venture, Project InMind, will include creating a system similar to Apple’s Siri but with more emphasis on contextual search voice interaction: Yahoo's version of Siri will be able to not only answer your questions, but also offer you personalized suggestions that take in to account a user's time, place, and Internet history.

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer made clear that she believes contextual search will be a main focus for the company. Project InMind will work to develop mobile applications and technologies based on personalized data and human behavior. Contextualized search will offer smartphone users an easy and more effective experience with their smartphones. It's also an area that has yet to be mastered which has potential for generating a lot of revenue.

Earlier this year, Yahoo acquired Aviate, a startup that creates an “intelligent home screen service.” Aviate customizes the home screen of your smartphone by automatically showing certain apps on your home screen based on your location. 

With the help of Aviate and Project InMind, Yahoo hopes to take advantage of mobile search by understanding and anticipating human behavior.

[via Mashable]

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