Nokia's Mobile Search App, Or, Mobile Search Is Local Search

I had planned to play with the new Nokia/Yahoo mobile search app and share my thoughts today. But I was first stymied by some connectivity problems with my operator, and then by the distinct lack of the most interesting-looking features -- the local search.

So what I've got is an app that's an easier and front end for searching Yahoo or searching for images. If I ever wanted to do that from my mobile phone, it would be great. But -- for me, anyway -- mobile search never involves those things. It's about searches for specific pieces of information that aren't conducive to a normal Yahoo or Google search on a mobile browser: the nearest coffee shop, the phone number of a restaurant, or a random piece of trivia. Mobile search isn't about simply adding a mobile front end to normal search, that's nominally useful. Mobile search is about providing answers and specific information, not links to pages that might possibly have the information you're looking for, or links to pages that won't render in your browser.

So, without the local search (which is currently only available in the UK, Finland and Sweden), file this under "disappointing". It's odd to see Yahoo get its SMS search so right, then get this so wrong, at least where the US is concerned. I guess since none of the models it will run on are officially sold here, there wasn't a reason to include it. But one of the features the app touts is "media roaming" -- ie working in many different countries. I guess that works only if you're in the UK, Finland or Sweden. Making traveling easy, whether it's in the same city or country, or internationally should be at the top of these sorts of things. After all, doesn't local information become more valuable when you're in a place you don't know your way around?

The other missing feature of the Nokia/Yahoo app is the content search, something I find even more useless than general Web search. Is it really that hard to find ringtones and wallpapers?

I guess that leaves me with the nice Yahoo SMS search... except it's not supported on my carrier, so I guess I'm back to GoogleME and Wapedia, a mobile version of Wikipedia. Transcoding pages to XHTML or WML or whatever is great, but is really nominally useful. Limiting search to pages in those languages limits the chances of somebody finding what they're looking for. Search providers like Google and Yahoo have put a lot of resources into building up their local search and mapping functionality on the wired Web, and this information is eminently useful on the mobile Web. All the other stuff is a nice aside, but mobile search is local search.

Comments

[Paul Whitaker]

This is the exact same problem that I have with mobile phone games. If I want to play a first person shooter like Halo I'm going to play it on my PC or my XBOX. When I play a game on my mobile phone, I want it to be a game designed to be best played on a mobile phone. It's like the little brother trying to hard to be exactly like his big brother.