Yahoo Brings Contextual Search to Mobile Platform

Yahoo may be down but it’s far from out when it comes to innovation on the Web. At the Cebit conference Yahoo launched a major new addition to its mobile phone platform that provides users with a contextual search capability that appears to be significantly more advanced than anything currently offered by Google or Microsoft. Called Yahoo One Place, the new service allows users to aggregate all their favorite information sources inside one service that then treats each of those items as a distinct dynamic object. This means that each of those objects will then kick off a search that automatically updates Yahoo One Space so the user always has the latest information available about that object. For example, if the user was a fan of the New York Yankees, the service automatically updates One Space with all relevant news, photos and other related content using a search feature that Yahoo calls Smart Bookmarks. The service can also be configured to be location aware so users are provided search updates that are relevant to their location and information stored in OneSpace can be shared with anyone on a social network using a new open API that Yahoo has developed for this service. That open API allows users to import data from any source of the web, including, Google, YouTube and Microsoft, to bring all their data into a centrally accessible resource. Unfortunately for Yahoo, this new contextual search capability is only available on Yahoo’s mobile platform at the moment. Marcos Boerries, a Yahoo executive vice president, said the mobile group will share this technology with the rest of Yahoo but could not say when this new contextual search capability would be available across all of Yahoo’s offerings. Boerries said OneSpace will be available from Yahoo’s carrier partners in the second quarter, which apparently includes the Apple iPhone, which Boerries used to show a quick demonstration of Yahoo OneSpace.