Rather than delivering a list of links, the new system delivers an aggregate of information including the latest news headlines, images from Flickr related to the area (the Web 2.0 photo hosting system owned by Yahoo!), local weather, local business listings and links to other websites. With Google dominating the static platform of desktop and laptop based traditional searching, it seems that rivals are now choosing niches they believe to have increasing relevance in the coming years and trying to get in early with the best service to achieve a dominant market share.
The pioneering system is known as oneSearch. With an inherently local theme (as it's fairly doubtful an average user will get the urge to look at Wikipedia from their mobile), oneSearch was first launched in January this year. Search results appear on one single page and various semantic rules are applied to try and calculate what the user is trying to find in the local area; the data is also prioritised into categories according to the results. It would take a Google user much more time and browsing to reach the same amount of relevant information.
It seems that Yahoo! has managed to achieve a coup in actually providing the service as well, with four of the world's five top mobile phone manufacturers jumping on board the project. Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and LG have all signed deals with Yahoo! to provide the Yahoo! Go software (which includes oneSearch) on their mobile phone platforms. In fact, their latest move saw Yahoo! team up with HTC and Windows Mobile just earlier this month. These deals provide Yahoo! with the potential to reach hundreds of millions of mobile phone users across the United States.
Pundits have expressed their opinion that the latest iteration of Yahoo! search is actually very good - although industry analysts remain waiting with bated breath to see if the predicted advertising revenue returns from the new technology will actually emerge.
