Late last year, Yahoo filed for a trademark on the phrase "Yahoo Axis." The filing raised more questions than answers at the time, but after six months Yahoo has finally spilled the proverbial beans - Axis is both a new search-oriented add-on for your web browser, and a new browser app for iOS.

Yahoo’s idea here is to give their (or perhaps more accurately, Microsoft’s) search engine its own flexible space to live in outside of the traditional browser paradigm. With Axis installed, users who need to find things online don’t need to tear themselves away from the page they’re currently looking at by navigating to a different page or opening a new tab. There’s no question that it takes a little getting used to — as a longtime Chrome user, it’s become second nature to open a new tab a bang a search query into the address bar — but it’s been very thoughtfully executed.

But Axis on the desktop is only one part of the equation — its other half lives on your iPhone (or your iPad). Yahoo has also whipped together a standalone browser app for iOS that seeks to bring that same revamped search experience to the mobile space.

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