Yahoo developing a potential "Search via SMS" feature with ads. Yahoo has had an SMS search feature in the US for some time, but the addition of ads to the service could allow Yahoo to roll out SMS search to many more countries.
The idea may not seem so sexy when we're used to advanced 3G smartphones and everything they're capable of --- but it could let many users in developing countries use their simpler mobile phones as a conduit to the wealth of knowledge on the internet.
All we have to go on is a patent filed by Yahoo with the USPTO, but it's enough to give us a sense of their goals. From the patent:
The system may allow a user to submit a search from a mobile device through a mobile message, such as a short messaging service (“SMS”) message. The user may send a mobile message containing a search query to a service provider. The service provider may retrieve the search results and an advertisement targeted to the search results. The service provider may transform the search results and advertisement into a mobile message, such as a wireless application protocol (“WAP”) push message. The service provider may encode each search result and advertisement in the mobile message with a service indication.
Google has been offering SMS searching since 2004 (try texting a search term to 4664, or Goog), and last year they brought the service to Nigeria and Ghana. Yahoo's real innovation is the way it is tying ads into the SMS results.
In my many years using Google SMS, I don't remember ever seeing an ad. Google seemed more concerned about giving users access to web data and ended up never building an infrastructure for delivering SMS ads.
That's not to fault Yahoo, it just puts their potential offering in perspective. There's surely money to be made in this market. And perhaps they'll be able to offer something more to users, and hit more markets, than Google can at the moment. For potential SMS advertisers in particular, Yahoo's new SMS search would be very enticing.