Yahoo has decided to discontinue its “Go” mobile app. Go was originally part of a larger “three screen” strategy that included TV and mobile delivery of Yahoo content. The Go app was intended as a way to have a richer, self-contained experience on mobile devices. But that strategy has given way to a “Yahoo for mobile” mobile portal approach that is consistent across most high-end mobile devices — and doesn’t require an app download. Of course Yahoo also still has mobile apps for selected smartphones, including the iPhone.

In fact the “Go” experience was never really that impressive and the newer mobile web experience is very strong:

Meanwhile at Google . . . TechCrunch is emphatically repeating the GPhone rumor that first surfaced via TheStreet in late October. TC believes that the phone is real and that the handset maker is LG or Samsung:

There won’t be any negotiation or compromise over the phone’s design of features – Google is dictating every last piece of it. No splintering of the Android OS that makes some applications unusable. Like the iPhone for Apple, this phone will be Google’s pure vision of what a phone should be.

So if true this will be Google’s version of the iPhone — what we always imagined the company was building before the launch of Android — but it will reportedly be “unlocked” and sold directly to the public, not through any carrier. However Google’s Android founder Andy Rubin has denied there will be a GPhone:

“We’re not making hardware,” Rubin told CNET. “We’re enabling other people to build hardware.”

Indeed, if Google were to build such a phone it would to some degree be competing with its hardware and carrier partners. There’s also the question of how much such a device would cost. In the US at least smartphones over about $200 are effectively not going to sell. Think about what happened when the iPhone’s price came dramatically down, courtesy of the AT&T subsidy, sales took off.

An unsubsidized GPhone would certainly cost more than $200 — and potentially much more. If you’re not eligible for the Sprint subsidy, for example, the Android HTC Hero in the US will cost you about $400. (I know this because I’m considering buying one.) But at the high end, such a phone could cost up to $600 or more. At $571 in the US (without a carrier subsidy) the Nokia “flagship” N97 smartphone has been a massive failure.

Google has flirted with the concept of an advertising subsidized handset in the past, at least conceptually in remarks made by CEO Eric Schmidt and others. But it would be tough to pull off in practice. MVNOs like Blyk in the UK have historically found that the appeal of “ads for minutes” programs are limited to select demographic groups (read: young and not affluent). Furthermore an ad-subsidized GPhone would potentially compromise the user experience, which is contrary to what TechCrunch claims is the objective of this device.

Indeed, TechCrunch is absolutely certain that a GPhone is coming. I hope so myself. I’m interested to see what “Google’s pure vision of what a phone should be” would be.

Yahoo has smartly launched a Spanish Language version of its mobile homepage. The company cites Census data that reflect a population of 46 million Hispanic people in the US. Yahoo also cited comScore data that show tremendous mobile internet growth among Hispanics, which is “outpacing that of all other groups, with 88% of Hispanics consuming content on their mobile phones.”

Here’s the new Spanish language mobile homepage, which mirrors the look and feel of the English-language version:

Here’s the PC version; note the tile ad en Espanol:

The ad below from the Spanish mobile site is in English but in short order we can probably expect Spanish-language ads, which is one of the big opportunities here that Yahoo is pursuing:

Who expected the search wars to open a new front involving WiFi? Google, Bing & Yahoo have each just announced free WiFi promotions of various sorts.

Google, which previously said it would provide free WiFi on all Virgin America flights through early next year, is now going to provide it at 47 US airports through the end of the year. A partial list includes “Las Vegas, San Jose, Boston, Baltimore, Burbank, Houston, Indianapolis, Seattle, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, St. Louis and Charlotte. Additionally, as a result of this project, Burbank and Seattle airports will begin offering airport-wide free Wi-Fi indefinitely,” says the press release. (Here’s the full list.)

According to Fortune:

Upon signing in, users will be asked if they want to set Google as their homepage or try the Google Chrome browser.

The company is also running a charity campaign to raise money for three nonprofit groups: Engineers without Borders, One Economy Corporation and Climate Savers Computing Initiative. When Google WiFi users first log on, the landing page will offer them the option of donating to the organizations. Google will match donations of up to $250,000 per airport.

For its part, Bing and JiWire will offer free WiFi at a broad range of hotspots in airports and hotels, in exchange for users conducting a search on Bing. It’s part of JiWire’s “Ads for Access” program. According to MediaPost’s article:

Microsoft’s Bing and JiWire will announce Monday an advertising campaign, along with the results, that lets consumers gain free WiFi Internet access at participating hot spots in exchange for one search on the engine.

Supported by JiWire’s mobile advertising network, which reaches about 20 million unique consumers monthly, Bing’s nationwide campaign runs across WiFi hotspots in airports and hotels.

The campaign aims to make more people aware of Bing and allow them to try the search engine, according to David Blumenfeld, senior vice president of strategy and business development at JiWire. “We’re all creatures of habit, so giving away free Internet access in exchange for one search on Bing is a great way to change user behavior,” he says.

Finally, Yahoo is providing free WiFi in New York’s Times Square, which also has a mobile angle. In 2006, Yahoo had a deal with Starwood hotels that subsidized WiFi in the chain’s Sheraton hotels. That deal is no longer in force however.

All these efforts are welcome but they’re only temporary. Eventually there will be ubiquitous WiFi/4G connectivity that will enable people out in the world to connect at higher speeds, hopefully for lower cost, than they can today through traditional WiFi networks.

Yahoo reported today that the company had “entered into an exclusive, multi-year, partnership with O2 Germany to become the preferred partner for mobile search and services, displacing Google.” Paid search results are reportedly part of the deal (and likely a revenue share as well). According to press materials:

O2 users now have direct access to Yahoo!’s mobile-optimized search engine, which is specifically designed to provide quick and easily accessible answers for users on the go. Yahoo! most popular properties including Yahoo! Mail, News, Weather, Finance, Flickr, Eurosports and Soccer will also be integrated on O2’s mobile portals. Users also will be able to sync their PC and mobile homepages, proving one seamless Yahoo! experience.

Spanish-owned Telefonica, the corporate parent of mobile carrier O2, had a prior deal with Yahoo that covered Latin America and the UK but not Germany, where O2’s search partner was Google — until now. According to an IDG News article and interview with Yahoo Mobile Europe managing director Mitch Lazar, O2’s experience in the UK with Yahoo was persuasive in the decision to replace Google.

Yesterday at the CTIA mobile conference, Yahoo Mobile SVP David Ko announced a range of upgrades to its mobile homepage. The new homepage was launched this past April. According to the statement that Yahoo put out yesterday, the homepage has been optimized for 1,900 devices. Video is also a bigger part of the experience now on smartphones.

Changes and upgrades for smartphones include the following:

• Dynamically updated content with pagination – without using additional screen real estate or refreshing, users are able to access a wealth of content. For example, the ‘Today’ module now surfaces ten of the leading stories from around the Web and gives users immediate access to 48 of the top news, business, sports and entertainment articles directly to consumers’ fingertips.
• An enhanced RSS reader –   that now supports photos with captions, and adds the ability to scroll through more headlines from favorite feeds without having to refresh content.
• Enhanced mobile video integration – with one click consumers can watch streaming video including the Yahoo! produced Tech Ticker – a rundown of the latest financial news, and Prime Time in No Time – a recap of last night’s TV shows, as well as news, entertainment and sports videos from the Associated Press.
• Enhanced movie results – movie posters now show you exactly what’s playing at a theatre near you, and with a few simple clicks you can watch the trailer, read reviews from Yahoo! and Rotten Tomatoes, and even buy tickets from participating theatres – all directly from your mobile device.

Yahoo’s homepage is one of the most visited sites in mobile in the US and worldwide, although Yahoo’s mobile search share lags Google — as it does on the PC.

The Yahoo site is extremely well done and offers a high degree of customization with “My Favorites” for those who sign in. And by signing in Yahoo can target ads in mobile based on PC activity as well.

The Yahoo Search Marketing Blog announced that your search ads will now automatically be displayed on iPhone & Android mobile phones. Yes, Yahoo said, this is an automatic opt in for all advertisers.

Yahoo said, “As of today, your ads should begin appearing immediately on these devices for relevant searches, if they have not already.” Yahoo boasted, if you didn’t have your ads on mobile devices, then “we’ve done it for you.” I assume there is an easy way to opt out, if you specifically do not want to show your ads on these devices?

Here is a picture of the ads:

There are also ads at the bottom of the search results.

For more information about mobile search ads from Yahoo go to searchmarketing.yahoo.com/mobile.

Last week Yahoo launched its new homepage, which allows users to customize the site and improves overall usability. The centerpiece of the recently launched Yahoo homepage is My Favorites, the new customizable left column that allows users to add third party content and make it more of a personal “dashboard.” The Yahoo mobile browser homepage, the most recent version of which was launched in Q1, already featured a heavy dose of personalization. However, Yahoo has updated the mobile homepage to bring it more into alignment with the new PC homepage.

The updated mobile homepage, which offers streamlining and simplification of the Q1 browser site, has three tabs: Today, My Favorites and All Sites. Today and All Sites are Yahoo centric, while My Favorites offers customization similar to the PC homepage. The one catch is that all your personal tabs/buttons, set up in the left column on the PC site, are not yet transferred to the mobile site when you’re signed in. On the iPhone version of the updated homepage, location is now available to the browser so content (and ads) are tailored to user location.

In many respects the new mobile browser site is better than Yahoo’s iPhone app, which offers a generally parallel experience. It’s useful as a feed and email reader and gives you the ability to read and update social network status on multiple sites simultaneously. The All Sites tab provides quick access to useful Yahoo content and properties on the go (e.g., Local, Weather, Movies). Search is prominently featured on the homepage and as a selection among the list on All Sites. Search Assist is also incorporated here for the first time.

One issue: I believe the site changed my default search engine on the Safari browser (upper right box) to Yahoo when I used it. I wasn’t paying close attention but noticed it was on Yahoo at one point this morning. I had never switched it from Google. I switched the default engine back to Google to see if launching the Yahoo iPhone app or using the mobile site would change it to Yahoo and it did not. So I’m not clear on what happened exactly and whether Yahoo is doing anything to change the default search settings.

That aside, after several false starts with Go and too many different mobile properties, Yahoo is now executing well in mobile. The mobile browser site continues to improve and with this latest round of changes has become perhaps the most complete and useful destination on the mobile internet.

Post script: I just heard from Yahoo that users are prompted to change their default search engine and must affirmatively accept. This must have followed the request to access my location, which I did authorize. So I guess I just pushed “yes” without closely reading the prompt.

A new report finds that mobile search and answers service ChaCha beat Google and Yahoo’s voice search tools in terms of overall accuracy and reliability across a range of query types in a controlled study. The study was conducted by Albright Communications/MSearchGroove in January of this year.

The report, which can be downloaded from the ChaCha site, was sponsored by ChaCha but the authors said, “While ChaCha sponsored the study, it was fully removed from the planning, testing, analysis, and reporting of this work.” The methodology was very specific and relatively elaborate. I summarize it below.

Both Google Voice Search and Yahoo oneSearch with Voice (powered by Vlingo) use automation for voice search. ChaCha uses humans to interpret voice queries, which are submitted through an 800 number: 1-800-2-ChaCha. Queries can also be submitted via text or online.

Here are the bottom line findings from the report:

Source: Albright Communications/MSearchGroove

Here’s how the two categories were defined:

• Natural language queries: queries submitted as questions using normal conversational syntax
• Keyword queries: queries seeking the same results as the natural language queries but reduced to the least number of keywords . . . necessary

What the table and findings above show is that in a “natural language” context, ChaCha was substantially better than Google and somewhat better than Yahoo/Vlingo. In a keyword query context the results are somewhat closer, but ChaCha still comes out on top.

One might expect this result given the involvement of human beings at ChaCha vs. pure automation with the others. From a pure user experience perspective, putting aside the back end, the report finds that ChaCha offers greater accuracy and reliability than either search engine when it comes to voice input.

The methodology:

All searches were performed by a single individual on the iPhone 3G. Here’s an abridged but otherwise verbatim description of the methodology used by the report’s authors:

To assess overall performance of the voice-enabled search services in a typical range of use cases and scenarios, we created 18 queries representative of mobile search usage and trends.

The queries covered search categories considered common in the mobile environment, such as navigation, directions, local information, general information on timely topics, and specialized or unusual long- tail topics. We included specific queries that represent the most popular mobile search terms in 2008, based on mobile search data publicly reported by AOL and Yahoo, as well as social queries. We did not include transactional queries . . . associated with downloading music and applications . . . and purchasing goods and services via a device.

Microsoft’s Tellme and Nuance Voice Control were not included in the study.

We’ve known for some time, based on a number of studies from Microsoft, Yahoo, SEM firms and ad networks, that an online ad campaign that includes both display and search performs better than one that features only display or search. In another version of that same theme, Yahoo recently said that it was using search queries as part of its larger behavioral targeting efforts across its display network. In other words, search queries become part of the targeting data that inform what display ads are shown to users thereafter.

Display advertising has been battered in this recession despite plenty of empirical evidence that it works as a branding medium and as a stimulus for search behavior. Behavioral targeting (BT) has been the subject of a great deal of focus over the past two or so years as a way to revive display advertising by boosting its performance. Yahoo is one of the big practitioners of BT and is arguing that it is starting to see search-like performance from some of its display campaigns.

Those campaigns are using all the complex layers of targeting that Yahoo offers (geo, BT, demo). In addition, the company is presenting different creative elements and copy to users in the context of that targeting through its dynamic SmartAds platform. SmartAds was launched in 2007 originally. At the time it launched I wrote about it:

Yahoo has been offering these various flavors of targeting, including behavioral targeting, for some time. The really new thing about SmartAds is the “creative assembly platform,” for which Yahoo has applied for a patent. The idea, according to Paez, is to take “templates” of advertiser-generated creative (e.g., copy, logos, graphics) and assemble those elements dynamically depending on the targeting opportunity. An 18-year-old woman in New England looking for hybrid vehicles, for example, might see a different ad from the same marketer than a 50-year-old male in Texas.

It’s really a form of quasi-real time multivariate testing (if that makes sense). As indicated, the Yahoo Search Marketing blog reports that SmartAds see search-level ROI:

So far, advertisers testing Smart Ads have seen significantly improved campaign performance based on a variety of metrics, including click performance, conversion and overall return on investment.

For example, after executing several Smart Ad campaigns with Yahoo! and its partners, Hewlett-Packard saw a return on ad spend that was more than 20 times higher than their traditional display campaigns, and on par with their search marketing campaigns.

Yahoo is now starting to bring third parties into the SmartAds program as part of its larger YOS initiative:

The program now helps deliver Smart Ads at greater scale by combining Yahoo!’s reach and user knowledge with innovative ad-serving technology from third-party providers. Smart Ads is an open platform, but Yahoo! is initially working with two partners, Teracent and Tumri, to make Smart Ads available to PC and mobile advertisers.

Accordingly Yahoo’s SmartAds also extends to mobile, where dynamic ad serving and changing creative based on location and other variables are actually critical to realize the “LBS opportunity.” As I wrote on the Local Mobile Search blog:

Agencies and marketers can’t create 300 separate ad units for every major city and ad copy permutation. Thus being able to deliver the right ad with the right copy on the fly is critical to creating the “inventory” required to capitalize on LBS whether online or, even more importantly, in mobile.

Though there are potential privacy issues that loom on the horizon for BT and the advanced targeting methodologies that SmartAds embody, it represents the future for both online and mobile display advertising.

MobileCrunch noticed Yahoo has added voice search capabilities to their Yahoo One Search iPhone App. I spent a few minutes testing it out and I have to say, that is does an okay job. I didn’t conduct enough tests to really compare it against Google’s iPhone voice search feature. They are both different in how they work.

First let me show you Yahoo’s voice search for a test on [who is barry schwartz]:

Step 1: Click on the “Press + Speak” button to activate voice search:

Step 2: Speak when button turns red and then tap it again when you are done talking:

Step 3: The button turns blue to show it is processing your search:

Step 4: Yahoo shows the search result, and in this case, wrong (I tried three times):

Google’s voice search works a bit differently.

Step 1: Either put the phone to your ear or click the microphone icon:

Step 2: Just speak and when you are done speaking, Google knows and shows that it is processing your search:

Step 3: Google displays search results:

So, Google is one step less, which is nice for a mobile search app.