What 'Micro-hoo' could do for mobile

A Microsoft-Yahoo ticket would significantly increase the Redmond, Wash.-based company's share of the online advertising you see on your PC. But it could also ramp up its presence on the smaller screen.

Microsoft ( already makes one of the top-selling mobile operating systems, which runs on over 140 devices made by phonemakers such as Samsung, Motorola

Yahoo meanwhile, is strong on the applications side - it recently launched a new version of its mobile Web portal, called "Go," that includes search, mapping, news and other services, and has inked several mobile advertising deals with carriers.

Should the proposed acquisition go through, analysts say the two could become a powerful player in the mobile industry. They could also turn into a challenging competitor to Google "open" operating system for cell phones the leading search engine unveiled late last year.

Although Google has managed to get four phonemakers to sign on to Android's "Open Handset Alliance," a consortium of manufacturers, developers and carriers, a Google-running phone isn't expected until later this year. According to research firm Strategy Analytics, Android phones won't ship in significant volumes until 2009.

Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system, meanwhile, already runs on about 9% of phones worldwide, comparable to BlackBerry maker Research in Motion ( global market share. Symbian, the world's largest mobile operating system, has over 50% market share and runs on the majority of Nokia ('s handsets.

"A merged Microsoft/Yahoo could start to develop the kind of integration between platform and applications that is still only a gleam in Google's eye," Ovum analyst John Delaney said in written commentary published Monday. He added that the two companies could "interwork" Yahoo's offerings with Microsoft's operating system, enabling easy-to-use and more tightly integrated mobile applications.

Put simply, thanks to its operating system, Microsoft could provide greater reach for Yahoo's mobile applications, while Yahoo could give Microsoft the content and services - and so-called "stickiness" factor - it lacks.

"Microsoft has focused more on the operating system end and Yahoo has focused more on applications," Ovum analyst Delaney said in a phone interview. "Together, the combined companies would have both pieces."

Of course, Google has also gained some traction on the mobile services end. It is the mobile search provider for several large carriers, including Vodafone.

Although the Android operating system doesn't have any end users yet, Strategy Analytics analyst Chris Ambrosio says a Microsoft-Yahoo alliance doesn't necessarily mean Android will be doomed.

"Right now I'm of the opinion that a rising tide lifts all ships," says Ambrosio.

All three companies - Microsoft, Google and Yahoo - have their eyes on the real prize: Cell phone-based ads, a still-nascent market analysts predict will bring in revenue ranging from $5 billion to $19 billion by 2011. Nearly three billion people worldwide have a cell phone - a much larger audience than online advertising has today.

And, unlike the PC, mobile devices have the ability to serve up highly targeted ads based on an individual's location.

It's unlikely the mobile effects of the proposed Microsoft-Yahoo deal will be felt for several years, as the industry itself is still in its infancy. But unlike some of its more well-known consumer offerings - e-mail and online search, for example - mobile is one area Microsoft can afford to heavily integrate Yahoo offerings with its own without running the risk of alienating current users. That's because, when it comes to mobile services such as search and news, there aren't that many current users to alienate.

While mobile expansion isn't the principal motivation behind Microsoft's bid for Yahoo, analysts say it is a key component. Ovum analyst Delaney calls it the "icing on the cake" for Microsoft.

"Like a good chess move, an acquisition should change the game along multiple vectors," says IDC analyst Shiv Bakhshi. "Microsoft has so many business under its umbrella, and you can bet mobile will be one of the ones affected by this move."

Is Facebook the Future of Search?

Baking a tarte tatin seemed an ambitious task for a newbie cook, but with the inclement weather outside and an orchard's worth of ripe fruit and other requisite ingredients in the pantry, I decided to tempt fate. But, as is typical with my ventures in the kitchen, things quickly got out of hand. I was about to Google the solution to my cooking dilemma, until a response to a status update on my Facebook profile — which read "Bill is cooking tarte tatin" — pre-empted that move and caused a dramatic paradigm shift in my view of the Internet's utility.

Before I could search for a solution, the solution found me.

That brought to mind the brief history of search-engine domination. If we trace the roots of our Internet behavior back to the Net's wild-west days in the mid-to-late '90s, most of us were probably launching into cyberspace from a portal page like Yahoo's, or through Excite or Lycos (remember them?). And by the new millennium, search engines, especially Google, had become the place to begin and end our Internet days. Then came Generation Y and the social network. What began as a younger-user phenomenon quickly caught on with 25-to-34-year-olds and older, and now social networks are changing the way we use the Internet in our daily lives (if only businesses could find a way to make money off that traffic). Is it any surprise, then, that search engines are no longer the most popular sites in the U.S.? Those bragging rights now belong to social-networking sites like Facebook — sites that as of June 2006 surpassed search engines as the most popular category by market share of visits

Do social networks herald the end of search? I wouldn't go that far. What may be in danger, however, is the serendipitous nature of search — for example, the gratuitous queries that we type into Google while we're on hold with India, waiting for tech support to solve our issue du jour. But, now, when we have idle time, we don't go to Google anymore; we go to Facebook. And on Facebook, we don't have to seek information. Instead, information just comes to us.

I continue to use search engines, of course, to seek important information, but over the last several months I've noticed that more and more information is also being pushed at me by my new friends (since shamelessly soliciting Facebook friendships in a previous column, I now have more than 900 new friends) — new music from Daisy's playlist, what books Mel is reading, what movies made the top of James's list — whether I've requested it or not. Perhaps the nature of the pure search will evolve this way too. Perhaps Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, is onto something with the alpha release of his new (currently the 400th most visited engine in the Hitwise directory of search engines in the U.S.), which combines the push of social networks with the pull of information search by allowing users to edit and monitor search results Wikipedia-style.

Back to my kitchen caper. As I explained to my wife that I had concocted a free-form rustic tart (read, one very messed-up tarte tatin), one of my new Facebook friends, Alex, who lives in France, seeing my Facebook baking status, sent me a message informing me that the cookbook How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman had the best tarte tatin recipe around, and that I could find it on page 700. In a sense, Alex's message summed up my vision for the future of search: I don't just want the information faster, I want it before I even ask for it.