Because your phone is not a PC

Is mobile search the same as PC search? This is the question we are daring everyone to answer. Today we are launching Yahoo! oneSearch on our Yahoo! Mobile Web service, which is accessible to the more than 85 percent of you in the US who can use a browser on your mobile phones.

If you ever tried using mobile search before today, you're familiar with the list of links you get as your search result, just like those you're used to getting on your PC. But is that what you really want on your phone, where networks are not yet DSL-fast and some of you have to pay to load every page? All the consumers we've talked to back us up on this: You want instant answers, right on the results page — not a list of links. That’s just what Yahoo! oneSearch does — we give you the answers you want in just one search.

Let’s say you're walking around New York City and are hungry for a slice. Just pull up oneSearch and type in "pizza" and boom — we give you all the information you need on one results page. We give you a list of local places to get a pie (with ratings from Yahoo! users), Flickr images, web sites, related news articles, products, and even information on "Pizza, The Movie." It's like getting a customized micro-site dedicated to your keyword. And if you click on one of the local pizza places, you'll get a page that gives you the address, phone number (one click places the call), ability to get driving directions and even see full user reviews to help you decide if that’s where you want to eat.

We believe that 2007 will be the tipping point for mobile Internet services. The mobile networks are ready, the devices are advanced enough and services like ours are innovative enough to give you the great experience you have been asking for. We have seen that once people try services like Yahoo! oneSearch and Yahoo! Go 2.0, they keep coming back and using them again and again. Go ahead, give it a try and find the answer to our question for yourself.

When I joined Yahoo! through the acquisition of my company, Verdisoft, more than two years ago, it was the mobile opportunity that got me excited. Mobile is the future of the Internet — just look at the numbers! In 2005, there were 896 million PC's and 2.14 billion mobile phones, and that gap is projected to only increase. By 2010, there will be 1.35 billion PC's and 4 billion mobile phones. We just need to think differently about how to translate desktop content to the small screen.

To learn more about Yahoo! oneSearch, go to our mobile site on your PC, check out this review on Read/WriteWeb, watch this screencast, or try it for yourself on your mobile phone at m.yahoo.com.

Marco Boerries
Senior Vice President, Yahoo! Connected Life