Dotmobi is putting find.mobi up for sale.
What is find.mobi?
Basically it’s the consumer mobile search engine that indexes and ranks all mobile sites.
From the press release
“find.mobi was an exciting project for us. Although we have not — until now — formally announced its availability, find.mobi is already receiving significant traffic. And it has been implemented as a private-labeled mobile search engine for one European operator with additional customers ‘in the pipeline,’ so we feel confident we’ve created a useful, valuable tool,” said James Pearce, dotMobi Vice President of Technology.
Paul Nerger, dotMobi Vice President of Advanced Services and Applications, said, “find.mobi was originally created by dotMobi to illustrate and communicate to mobile search vendors how we thought that search should be done to make the mobile Web more compelling. When we looked at early mobile search sites, we were disappointed. We simply did not think that it made sense to return non-mobile content as part of a mobile query. find.mobi was built to serve as an example to the search industry to change the way that it should think about search when applied to mobile. But find.mobi has outgrown the lab, and now it’s time for find.mobi to get a better home where it can continue to grow.”
Why is it for sale?
Because it was created as a development tool to showcase the potential and ability of mobile search services.
Why is it for sale (gossip version)?
Google who was the sponsor is at loggerheads with dotmobi about the search engine and other parties also wanted different things for the search engine.
Other Gossip?
Some said that dotmobi was the wrong company to launch this in the first place and it should have been done by an independent body not the owner of dotmobi domains.
Even more gossip?
Yikes – I am going to get sued again and I can’t compete with Google (so just email or call me for the dirt).
What we think?
So far, I have been impressed with ready.mobi and find.mobi. OK. I had issues because GoMo News wasn’t on it –but since then I have had a really good insight as to why there were issues. James and Ronan have been ambassadors for find.mobi and dotmobi which is compelling enough reason to give something a chance as well. I know I am going to sound like a daft woman, but when you hear from people working on a team about the brilliance of a project – you sort of get excited about it.
So, who should buy find.mobi?
Well I heard a rumour that a very large mobile operators wanted it. Then I heard another rumour that Nokia was going to buy it – so that it finally had its own killer mobile search service. Because you can’t be a mobile Internet company without a search offer.
Whoever gets it – just remember. Mobile Search is not enough. Idle screen search is the future and that is where any mobile application must sit.
