Live at the Yahoo press conference
By Barb Dybwad 
posted Jan 8th 2007 4:26PM
posted Jan 8th 2007 4:26PM
We're here live at the Yahoo press conference, where they're talking about their efforts in mobile internet. Marco Boerries, SVP Yahoo! Connected Life, just started in about Yahoo's interest in providing content and services to users across a range of devices via its new Java-based client running on Motorola, Samsung, Nokia and RIM phones. * Mobile devices outnumber PCs worldwide; internet is going mobile. Users want services optimized for their mobile phones, not just a PC sync experience.
* Yahoo! Go 2.0 mobile user experience -- uses My Yahoo! settings and personalization. Changes you make on your phone are mirrored back to your My Yahoo! account
* Localization -- search localization, tailors search results to your current location.
* Flickr integration -- upload and manage images from the phone. Share, browse, and search Flickr photos.
* E-mail -- a streamlined client on your phone, searchable and manageable
* Yahoo! oneSearch -- not just PC search condensed to the mobile phone. Highly contextual search based on your search terms: search on a location, instead of getting thousands of results filtered by relevance you get results tailored to a location: current weather, local events, geo-coded Flickr photos, news, maps. Search on a movie, get results tailored to a movie: a synopsis, cast, when/where it's playing locally, driving directions, news. Later this month oneSearch will be available as a browser-based service for web browsers on phones that can't run the client
* The app is downloadable today from http://go.yahoo.com
* Monetizing via advertising
* Demoing the app: carousel menu at the bottom with Yahoo widgets, to be opened later this year for user-created widgets. Carousel includes widgets for oneSearch, news, sports, finance, entertainment, sports, weather, Flickr, mail.
* Finance ties to your portfolio from Yahoo! Finance to show relevant stock quotes and news; Entertainment shows news, web images based on search term; Flickr interface offers upload, friend invite, my contact's photos, etc.; Email offers search, attachment support, etc.
* "The internet in your pocket"
Now it's time for Q&A:
Audience: what are the remaining roadblocks with the carriers? Marco: We're talking to all the majors. We want to reach every phone.
Audience: how do you balance unbridled (and possibly negative) user reviews with the desires of your advertisers? Marco: We've already been dealing with this on the PC side, there aren't necessarily any new challenges here particular to the mobile side
Audience: can advertisers pay to get higher listings for search terms? Marco: Just like on the PC we always make a distinction between paid advertising and algorithmic relevance listings; it may look different on the mobile phone but we'll always denote that.
Audience: say you're looking for an obscure website and it doesn't come up in this contextual search, is there a way to tweak that? Marco: We have full transcoding built into it, you'll be able to see relevant web results as well.
That's all, folks! Yahoo peeps are walking around with phones demoing Yahoo! Go.
Nothing to see here really. Can they just merge with MS and get it over with?
Agreed. I used to work for Yahoo! Mobile 7 years ago when it started and I think they've been using the same powerpoint.
Compared to the web, mobile development is hell and the results suck. The display sucks, the input sucks, the bandwidth sucks, navigation sucks, monetization sucks, development and testing takes more time and costs more, usability sucks, effective marketing of services is virtually impossible, and you cant even start thinking about anything until you have established a carrier relationship which usually results in a committee-driven product which no one wants. I'm glad 7 years later that I left for those reasons and absolutely nothing has changed.
Blackberry has it right - just do your best to be a tiny PC client, with a regular email client, keyboard, etc, and stop trying to make a regular phone factor usable and rely on special mobile content. Yahoo! is just 'doing what it can' for the last 7 years, which, since they dont control carriers or handset makers, means continuing to bash their heads against the wall shoehorning mediocre products onto devices which will never do them justice.
Audience: Marco, are you the master of the non sequitur?
Marco: We integrated Yahoo maps with mobile phone software to make make "maps on the Go!"
Hey Yahoo, where's the HTC love? From my 8125,
"There are no plans to support Yahoo Go 2.0 for your PDA"
Looks like only Blackberry and RAZR users get the mobile experience.
Can Yahoo not afford a projector with keystone correction? Or are they just not tech-savvy enough to adjust it? Sheesh.
shame they don't support windows mobile.
What's with all these low budget press conferences at CES?
I also covered this over at the Scientific American blog (hi Barb!)
http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=blogging_the_ces_why_is_everyone_using_t&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
...and I've got to say, I kind of feel like the angry ex-yahoo employee might be right. The guy giving the presentation admitted that folks simply don't use their phones for this kind of content for a reason - and then he claimed that it was that this content hadn't been presented all that well / accessibly before.