Beardy bails Yang's Yahoo search strategy

YAWHO? HAS PERSUADED BEARDY BRANSON to make the search company the default internet search engine for Virgin Mobile's subscribers.

The Beeb says that "This is being seen by some as an attempt to make a comeback" by Yahoo, having seen its web business take a nosedive.

We'd suggest that it takes that particular brand of Big British Castle optimism to see a scrobbling with one of the UK's smallest mobile brands as any kind of consolation for the recent catastrophic ditch-diving of Yahoo's share price.

The improbably-named Mitch 'Frickin' Lazar said that Yahoo's worldwide mobile customer base, now estimated at around 850m, will make the company the " Starting point for mobile consumers globally, revolutionising the mobile search experience."

That might be something of an exaggeration. But what most people don't know is that Yahoo has actually spent a great deal of time and effort refining its mobile search experience over the past couple of years. The firm has a substantial team of people in its Silicon Valley offices, handpicking the best search results from the many millions in its database and optimising them for mobile, creating something of a human-powered search experience. Yahoo is betting that the human touch will see them win out over Google in the mobile sphere.

Perhaps what it isn't betting on is the move of the 'full web experience' to the mobile space, heralded by devices like the Iphone and the Android G1.

If that happens en masse, it looks like another piece of the Yahoo puzzle will be consigned to the dusty cardboard lid of spare bits. µ