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Yahoo, Telefónica Ink Search Deal October 2, 2007

Posted by ianmartinez in : Trends, What's New? , trackback

From today’s Times, Yahoo has apparently reached an agreement to feature its search engine on mobile portals run by Spanish carrier Telfónica — a clear competitive strike against rival Google.

Times reporter Eric Pfanner does a good job outlining the slow-but-steady move toward maturity in the mobile advertising market.

The deal comes on the heels of a Yahoo search revamp, reported in the Times but detailed quite well over at TechCrunch. New features include Yahoo Local restaurant and hotel finders courtesy of Yahoo Local, with links to maps, ratings, and reviews, shortcut results from Yahoo Shopping, and bundles more features… all of which happen to be well suited to mobile search.

What’s the significance of this deal, much like the one Google recently inked with Hutchison’s 3? Well, as the main article points out, this market is still in its infancy, and already you’re seeing jockeying accelerate. What will happen when the 700 MHz auction plays out and “beachfront” spectrum is right at, say, Google’s fingertips? Even if the search company doesn’t land a winning bid, you’re still very likely to see greater integration of mobile technology and search/database content. Content providers’ tentacles continue to stretch…

Is there a drawback? Maybe. The power-play being made by Google and Yahoo here may backfire, as Erick Schonfeld mentions in that TechCrunch post:

Yahoo has really nailed guided search with this release—as long as what you are looking for can be found somewhere else within Yahoo. That’s my one pet peeve about Yahoo’s new search upgrade. All of these shortcuts are helpful, but they are not all objective. Most of them (the search widgets, not the keyword assistant) point back to Yahoo.

Just another front to watch as the mobile industry completely reconfigures in the coming year.

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