Yahoo’s impressive mobile run

Yahoo continues to serve as the Washington Generals of the Internet — losing to Google at every turn — but the company seems to be making all the right moves in mobile.
The company’s latest coup came last week at the Mobile World Congress trade show, as T-Mobile International said it will make Yahoo the exclusive mobile search provider for the highly touted web’n’walk service in 11 European markets. T-Mobile said it will offer Yahoo’s oneSearch to customers and outlined plans to deploy popular Yahoo services such as e-mail, instant messaging, weather and the photo-sharing application Flickr.
The move booted Google off the web’n’walk home page — the dominant Internet player had powered T-Mobile’s service since its launch three years ago — and followed January’s announcement that Yahoo would deliver display ads on the service.
The news may seem trivial in light of Yahoo’s recently announced job cuts and a possible hostile takeover bid from Microsoft Corp. But Yahoo’s accomplishments are impressive. The company claims 29 operator partners for its oneSearch offering, with a potential reach of 600 million wireless customers. (Recent wins include a 16-country deal with America Movil, a 15-nation pact with Telefonica and a partnership with AT&T Mobility.) A recent study from Nielsen Mobile found that Yahoo is the leading mobile Internet brand for U.S. consumers, drawing 53% more traffic than second-place Google. Yahoo Go for Mobile has garnered praise from both CES and the Global Mobile Awards, and the company last week unveiled oneConnect, an open-architecture product comprising e-mail, instant messaging, text and social networks. And Google recently tweaked its search offering for mobile users in the United Kingdom in an effort to make it more mobile-friendly — like oneSearch.
Still, T-Mobile’s move may have been more about politics than products. Yahoo has strived to cultivate relationships with carriers, while Google has been less willing to capitulate as it moves into mobile. Google’s fierce independence was underscored last week when it announced a deal to embed its mobile search application on high-end devices from Nokia Corp., whose direct-to-consumer Ovi service is already giving carriers heartburn.
Nokia and Google have managed to unearth some carrier allies, of course. Nokia has secured a handful of operator relationships with Ovi, and Google’s Open Handset Alliance includes T-Mobile International, NTT DoCoMo, Sprint Nextel Corp. and others.
But while Google’s mobile strategy is to give users as much freedom on their phones as they enjoy on PCs, Yahoo is making headway by trying to take users by the hand on the wireless Web — and snuggling up to carriers as it does so. Instead of trying to cram the Internet onto mobile phones, Yahoo hopes to give users a more mobile-friendly — if more restrictive — experience.
That tack is resonating with both operators and consumers. Google’s strategy might be a smarter long-term play, but it’s Yahoo that is making impressive strides right now.