Google and Yahoo are both entering the mobile phone market in a big way. Yahoo's plans are still secret, but rumours of the company joining Nokia to release a Yahoo mobile phone have been circulating for some time now. Google, meanwhile, has decided to launch itself as a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) running its own mobile services over an existing mobile phone network. This is the same model that other MVNOs, such as Virgin Mobile, implement successfully. And speaking of Virgin Mobile, NTL's near-billion pound bid for the MVNO was apparently in response to the rumours that Yahoo will go MVNO in the very near future.
Understanding why search engines are entering the mobile phone space
The reason behind this sudden rush into the mobile space is
presence. A long-held pipe dream of the mobile phone industry is the ability of a mobile phone to pipe adverts to a user based on their actual geographical location. For example, you walk past a McDonalds, and an advert pipes up saying: "look, lard-meister - more lardy goodness over there, and at a bargain price! Go on, you know want some." I remember this concept being talked about with great enthusiasm when I worked with Orange back in 1997, but no doubt the concept predates this considerably.
The idea now is that the combination of mobile phones, which can inform a mobile network operator where they are, and instant messenger networks, which tell the IM network that a user is online, will actually make this pipe-dream a reality. The search engines already have sophisticated ad-serving systems in place. They also have their own IM networks. All they need now is access to the mobile phone, and their plans to dominate the real world as much as they dominate the cyber world are complete.
"For this to happen, the Web must reach out into the mobile phone arena. By launching its mobile phone in Europe, Yahoo takes its first step towards being able to track advertising targets through real space, not just through cyberspace.This is what is behind much of T-Mobile's plans to launch Web'n'Walk - providing Google-based Web browsing to mobile phone users. If linked to an advertising medium such as Google Adsense, it would become possible to track which retailer the target is nearest to, and offer that opportunity to a local advertiser. For example, if it is known that the user regularly stops at Starbucks, Costa could pop up an advert on screen pointing out that it has a special on latte, fifty yards away."
The encroachment of search engines into the mobile space, and the threat from other Internet technologies such as IM networks and VoIP on its core telecoms business, is also driving NTL's decision to buy Virgin Mobile, and is putting pressure on Sky to follow suit.
With the increasing sophistication of the new mobile phones, we could very soon see a new way of using the mobile phone and the web, where real space meets cyberspace, the two blur, and the idea of a 'world wide web' distinct from the reality around us becomes as anachronistic as measuring the power of an engine according to the equivalent power of a horse. Wow, the 21st century has finally arrived!
