Yahoo! adds voice to mobile search service

LAS VEGAS, INDIA: Yahoo! Inc. on Wednesday unveiled oneSearch 2.0, an enhanced version of its mobile search service, allowing users to initiate search using text or voice.

"With Yahoo! oneSearch 2.0, we are fundamentally changing the way consumers use the Internet on their mobile phones," said Marco Boerries, executive vice president, Connected Life, Yahoo!

Sunnyvale, US-based Internet giant plans to open up Yahoo! oneSearch to publishers to integrate content, simplify search input with Search Assist and voice-enabled search.

Yahoo! hopes this would provide greater relevance through richer, more detailed search results. "With the launch of Yahoo! oneSearch in 2007, we revolutionized mobile search by re-creating search specifically for the mobile phone, focusing on answers, not just Web links. In just over a year, we signed 29 partnerships with carriers across the globe, covering more than 600 million consumers under contract," added Boerries.

Mobile ecosystem strategy

At the CTIA Wireless 2008, Boerries also announced the company's strategy to foster the mobile ecosystem and extend Yahoo!'s leadership in mobile.

Delivering a keynote, he said, "We all agree that the mobile Internet opportunity is massive. The key question is how to enable the supporting mobile ecosystem in order to realize its full potential."

Besides oneSearch 2.0, Yahoo! will offer Mobile Homepage, Yahoo! oneConnect and Yahoo! onePlace, in 2008.

Mobile Homepage is a personalized, essential starting point to the mobile Internet. Yahoo! oneConnect is an all-in-one communications application that offers “the best way to keep in touch with the people they care about.”

The company said its onePlace is a content management application letting users keep tabs on everything they care about all in one place.

Yahoo! is also enabling the world's developers and publishers through the Mobile Widget Platform. This platform will also offer Blueprint, an XML-based programming language for developers, and instant scalability.

The instant scalability enables a developer's offering to run across the same portfolio of hundreds of mobile devices that Yahoo!'s own mobile services run on (including xHTML/HTML, Java and native environments).