Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Yahoo jumps ahead of Google on mobile phone search

Yahoo introduced on Monday a new Internet search system for mobile phone users that delivers locally relevant answers, a move that vaults it ahead of what rival Google Inc. now offers.

Starting in the United States, with international markets to follow later this year, Yahoo said it planned to take advantage of the inherently local nature of many Web searches performed on phones.

Yahoo! Go on OneSearch, differs from how computer Web search delivers raw sets of links. Instead Yahoo serves up a list of actual information, such as news headlines, images from Yahoo's Flickr photos site, business listings, local weather and links to other Web sites.

Rather than showing popular movies or critical reviews, for example, Yahoo search lists local theaters playing a particular movie, user ratings of the film and news headlines related to the movie. Users only need to enter a zip code or city name for Yahoo oneSearch to begin delivering local search results.

Google takes a user several more steps to reach the same information as Yahoo oneSearch.

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