The iOS and Android application marketplaces may both stock hundreds of thousands of programs–a reasonable percentage of which are pretty darn impressive–but it can be surprisingly  tough to find the good stuff. Neither Apple’s App Store nor Google’s Android Market does a fantastic job of steering you towards every program you might find useful and/or entertaining, giving third parties such as Chomp an opportunity to full the void.

Now a very large third party is entering the fray: Yahoo. It’s launched an app search engine for iOS and Android designed for desktop browsers, plus an app called AppSpot, available in iOS and Android versions, that recommends apps and lets you search for them. I’m glad it’s doing it–this is a logical challenge for a search engine to take up–but the results so far are mildly pleasant at best.

The desktop version has a nicely-done interface–even if you’re looking for an app for a phone, the extra real estate makes the process easier. And the mobile apps are fun to use, although they aren’t a great leap forward beyond Chomp and other existing options. They’re just another source of app recommendations, and another way to search for relevant keywords.

AppSpot brags that it provides “Picks Just for You” and asked for permission to “see app information on your device” when I installed it on my iPhone. But if it does indeed provide customized recommendations out of the box, I’m not seeing anything uncanny–it had some suggestions that weren’t revelations (such as Angry Birds) and some that didn’t come within a country mile of my interests (like one that would let me “keep up to date with Emma Watson, no matter where you are”).

(Two other apps recommended just for me were something called Instant Lyrics and a game named Justin Bieber Revenge. Curiously enough, Eric Blattberg’s AppSpot review over at Wired says that AppSpot also recommended these apps just for him.)

Of course, maybe AppSpot will understand me better if I continue to use it. I’ll stick with it awhile and see what happens.

My favorite AppSpot feature is a nifty bit of integration between the browser-based version and the apps: once you’ve located an app you’d like to try in your browser, you can pull up a bar code and take a picture of it with your phone to pull it up in the application store. Sure, it only saves you a few taps over finding the app yourself, but it’s still clever.

In my time with AppSpot so far, I’ve discovered one piece of iPhone software that has a shot at becoming one of my most-used apps: a Gmail interface called iMailG. That alone has made the AppSpot experience worthwhile. But I’m still looking for a transcendently useful way to find smartphone software–something that’s as much of  revelation as Yahoo was in 1994 or Google was in 1998. Anyone have any recommendations?

Hitwise found in March that the two sites combined now account for 30.01% of all searches in the US, up about a point and a half from the previous month. Google on the other hand dropped, moving from 66.69% to 64.42%, indicating that the people who weren’t using it were likely headed to Bing.

What’s behind this change? It could be that Microsoft’s algorithms are doing a better job at finding what searchers want. Experian Hitwise — who provided this data — found that on Yahoo and Bing, about 81 percent of all searches resulted in a visit to a website. Compare this to Google, which is significantly lower at 65 percent of all queries.

Could it really be that Bing just has a better handle on search? Sounds like Internet blasphemy (Google even accused Microsoft of stealing its search results) but that really could be the case. Microsoft has been hard at work behind the scenes making changes, and it’s clear it’s serious about becoming a player.

I’m still a Google guy, but hey technology changes fast, and that might not always be the case. Go ahead Bing, impress me…

Go to search.yahoo.com and try it out. For example, type in the query “philadelphia weather.” Once Search Direct figures out that is what you are looking for, a brief summary for the forecast appears next to the suggested terms. It works for other types of queries, such as “LeBron James”. Entering his name pops up his current season stats.

Yahoo’s effort here is to match its users with “answers, not links,” kind of like an Ask Jeeves on steroids. There might be a chance depending on what you’re looking for that you would never have to leave Yahoo’s site.

Google is doing something similar at times with Instant, but at least in my use it seems Yahoo’s a little quicker on the draw. Right now about 15 different types of searches will give those instant results — weather, sports, music, and news are just some — but Yahoo says this eventually could span hundreds of categories.

The company will also monetize the feature by allowing for advertisers to embed an ad for select queries. For example, searchers for “Target” could be presented with the current video advertisement in that pane much like the weather forecast or sports statistics appear.

Go ahead and try it. Do you think it’s better than Instant? Let us know in the comments.

TV shows occasionally call it quits when they’re still on top–Mary Tyler Moore, Seinfeld, The Sopranos. Why is it that every good Web site goes through a sad decline?

It’s AltaVista–the first great search engine. Probably still the second greatest one ever, after you know who. And as Liz Gannes of All Things Digital is reporting, it’s apparently going away due to downsizing at its current owner, Yahoo. (Other victims of Yahoo’s death panel include the once-great Delicious and AllTheWeb, the bland Digg clone Yahoo Buzz, the could-have-been-neat MyBlogLog, and stuff I can’t identify, such as Yahoo Picks.)

AltaVista’s glory years were brief: They started with its founding in 1995 and started to crumble when you know who launched in 1998. I remember being knocked out by how good it was for its time–and my not-technologically-unsophisticated dad asking me how it was even possible that it could instantly scour the entire contents of the  World Wide Web for pages that included any keywords you threw at it.

The service probably would have run into trouble no matter what–it seemed to be doomed to suffer from mismanagement and/or benign neglect from the get-go, at first from its inventor, Digital Equipment Corporation, which treated it as a technology demo rather than a potentially massive business. It was then owned by Compaq (1998-1998) CMGI (1999-2003), Overture (2003), and Yahoo (2003 to present–it picked up AltaVista along with Overture, not because it wanted to own it). Yes, that’s five owners in five years.

At first, AltaVista’s post-Digital owners wrongheadedly tried to turn it into a Yahoo-like megaportal. Then it became an orphaned brand name affixed to generic search results. Today, it still claims to “to advance Internet search with new technologies and features designed to improve the search experience for consumers,” but don’t you believe it: AltaVista results are simply Yahoo results with a different logo and slightly fewer fripperies such as local results. (Which means that it’s really a variant of Microsoft’s Bing, the search index that powers Yahoo.) I’m unclear as to why anyone would make a conscious decision to use it.

The weird thing is that the original AltaVista involved two extraordinarily powerful ideas: advanced technology designed to deliver relevant search results from all over the Web really fast, and a simple home page that didn’t consist of much more than a search field. (Sound familiar?) If the engine’s business strategy had consisted of continuing to be AltaVista but in a better and better form, we might all be talking about AltaVistaing for information today. (Instead, I recently caught myself referring to having Googled for something back in 1996, having forgotten that there was such a thing as a pre-Google era.)

Here’s AltaVista circa 1996, by which point it had gotten downright cluttered by its original standards:

And here it is in 2000, after it had already been thoroughly screwed up:

I’m sorry that AltaVista fizzled rather than flourished, but I’m not sad to see Yahoo shut it down. Last year, I called it the eighth most tarnished brand name in tech and said that using it was like visiting an old friend who’d undergone a lobotomy. If you weren’t aware AltaVista still existed, I’m not surprised. And if loved it way back when and knew it was still with us, you probably took no joy in its continued existence. It’s far better that it live on in fond memories than that it actually live on.

In fact, I hope that Yahoo’s mercy killing starts a trend. AOL, how about doing away with the sad jokes that are CompuServe and Netscape in their current forms?

Yahoo’s search engine is now powered by Bing, so essentially the two sites are now one in the same. So in other words, Bing’s got 27 percent of the market now. Now add July’s numbers together, and you can see that together they’ve actually lost share.

So where did this share go? Some of it has gone to Google: the company saw its share rise .8 percent to 65 percent of the market, meaning that the much ballyhooed Yahoo+Bing deal isn’t doing quite what it should. Is it cause to worry for Yahoo and Microsoft? I’d argue at this point no, but the companies better hope that things turn around.

“Bing is on an unequivocal roll. It’s no longer a question of whether or not Bing will continue to grow share but one of where will future growth come from,” my colleague Joe Wilcox writes over at Betanews. “Microsoft loses by taking share from Yahoo. The gains that matter must come from Google.”

I agree with Joe — Bing cannot really celebrate these numbers because they aren’t all that positive at face value. Certainly, Bing has upward momentum, but at the same time it almost has to cheer for its competitor to at least tread water because in the end its Google that’s in its sights in the battle for search engine dominance.

It shouldn’t be all too surprising that the social networking site has come out on top. Facebook’s user experience invites the user to spend an extended period of time on the site, whether it be posting statuses, playing games, or creeping on other’s profiles.

Google doesn’t have that. All we come to do there is search and get out, really. There currently is not much there to keep us, so its more of a passthrough than a destination per se. It should be noted that Google’s other sites — including Gmail and YouTube –  were apparently included in the numbers but that still wasn’t enough.

Even more interesting than the race between Google and Facebook is Yahoo’s own fall from grace. In the same study taken last year, Yahoo had 12 percent of user’s online time, versus only five percent each for Google or Facebook. This year, that has fallen to 9.1 percent in the current survey.

I know at least in my own usage, my Facebook time far outweighs any time I spent on Google. I could also arguably say I spent more time on Twitter that Google, too. What sites are you using the most?

The announcement is a bit odd given that Yahoo just signed a wide ranging partnership with Microsoft last July. It is not clear how much — if any — say that Yahoo, Inc. had over the talks. In addition, it would move to Google’s advertising platform as well, which makes it sound like there really would now not be much Yahoo in Yahoo Japan at all.

The site enjoys a 58 percent share in the country, compared to just 38 percent for Google. However together, these two companies now essentially control the entire search market in Japan.

I have to say I’m shocked by this news, especially considering that Bing will be behind Yahoo’s primary search engine here in the states and in Europe. The quarterly financial report — where this news first surfaced — says that Yahoo, Inc. position as a strategic partner would not be affected.

That seems a bit odd. If you’re building a brand, wouldn’t you want it to be the same across all the markets you’re involved with?

One thing seems certain now: Yahoo as a brand itself seems to be slowly fading away, much like AOL has. The heart of it is now outsourced, and there is not honestly much left. Will the company follow a similar decline? Only time will tell.