Yahoo! India introduces driving directions & Community Search on Yahoo! India Maps

Unique Features

• Calculation of distance & time, even Auto Rickshaw fares!
• Indication of landmarks and localities along the route
• Ability to search for places of interest such as ATMs, Petrol Pumps, Restuarants, Hotels, etc
• Understands queries in conversational style
• Provision for concise direction, with ability to SMS to one’s mobile phone

Yahoo! India, the largest Internet brand in India, has introduced driving directions and community search on its existing Yahoo! India maps offering at http://in.maps.yahoo.com. Sporting a clean look, users can search for directions between 179 cities, 4767 towns, and 226114 villages. Users can also search for about 3 million points of interest marked by Internet users from around the web

Yahoo! India Maps is extremely user friendly and has several features that sets it apart from others. It understands queries in a conversational style like “From Hard Rock café, Mumbai to Lower Parel Railway Station, Mumbai” or “ATMs near Forum Mall, Bangalore”.

Yahoo! India users can now get to their destinations easily as Yahoo! India Maps provide landmarks along the route, the count of roads between turns and the areas that they will enter and leave. Apart from calculating the distance and time taken for travel, the instruction set also takes care of One Ways and even Auto Rickshaw fares in major cities.

Mr. Sharad Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, Yahoo! India, R&D, said “At Yahoo! India R&D, we are constantly innovating to develop product and services that make the lives of our users easier. Driving directions & Community Search will make Yahoo! India maps more compelling and deepen our engagement with users.”

Users of Yahoo! India Maps can also send Driving Directions to their mobile phones as an SMS. They can pan and zoom to any point on the map, right click and ask for directions from or to that point.

Yahoo! India Maps (beta) was launched in April 2007 and is a Web 2.0 product built out of Yahoo!’s Research & Development Centre in Bangalore. With Yahoo! India Maps, you can search for localities, cities, towns and villages. It also contains satellite imagery for large parts of the country. Apart from looking for locations, you can also find information about various points of interest such as ATMs, Petrol Pumps, Restaurants, places of historical interest etc.

About Yahoo! India:
Yahoo! India (www.yahoo.co.in), launched in June 2000, has established itself as the pioneering and leading Internet portal providing value added services for Web users in India and users abroad with special interest in India.

Yahoo! India seeks to provide online products and services essential to users’ lives, and offers a full range of tools and marketing solutions for businesses to connect with Internet users globally. It presents a deep array of communications, commerce and content services that include Yahoo! India Mail, Yahoo! India Search, Yahoo! India Messenger, Yahoo! India Finance, Yahoo! India Movies, Yahoo! India Cricket, Yahoo! India Answers, Yahoo! India News and Yahoo! India Search Marketing.

About Yahoo! India Research and Development
Yahoo! India R&D (http://bangalore.yahoo.com) was established with a mission to deliver software solutions based on product and technology innovation to create a significant business impact for Yahoo! Inc. globally. The company’s operations are divided into Yahoo! R&D India and Yahoo! Engineering Services India. The R&D group creates technologies and products that cater to our everyday needs on the Internet and help achieve sustained visible impact on a global scale. The Engineering Services group provides quality assurance services, monitors and supports all the Yahoo! applications deployed worldwide.