Yahoo keeps mobile search in the spotlight as it boots out Google from O2

Today, Yahoo! and O2 Germany announce and launch an exclusive, multi-year mobile search partnership, with Yahoo! providing the search services on O2’s mobile portals, displacing Google as their search partner of choice. Additionally, as part of the deal, O2’s portals will include links to some of Yahoo!’s most popular mobile properties including Yahoo!’s new mobile homepage, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Weather, Yahoo! Finance, Flickr, Yahoo! Eurosport and more.

What we think?
I call myself the queen of mobile search. The reason for this can be called arrogance but I will say something time and time again – Yahoo provides the best mobile search to date. The fact that Google is ousted is no surprise to me as I use mobile search daily.

But at this point, I am not sure that it matters. Yahoo! is not a search leader and it would do better to sell it mobile search services to someone that can market them better.

No. Maybe that comes across too harshly. Yahoo! in a word has “nailed” mobile search. Deals such as this with O2 are also lucrative and exclusive. Yahoo has managed what competitive white label mobile search providers such as Jumptap, Medio and InfoSpace failed to do. Yahoo is the user case that mobile search on the operator portal is vital.

Yahoo needs to be winning some serious kudos from this and from its mobile search offering.