Yahoo oneSearch has gotten a whole lot smarter – the mobile service is integrating content from both Yahoo Answers and Wikipedia. Frequent travelers will be happy to hear that airline information is getting added, as well.
Note the use of present tense throughout most of the previous paragraph – these changes are taking place today, so results may be a little spotty at the moment. It won’t be long before oneSearch users have a lot more information at their fingertips, however.
David Dalka is pleased to see the flight info, writing, “Assuming the airline data is accurate at the time of the query this is an example of a highly useful mobile query.” He then gives an example: “A query of UA 90 shows a canceled flight today.” Nifty.
And how about Yahoo Answers? It’s not my favorite thing in the world, but TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld notes, “One of Yahoo’s most successful product launches in recent years has been Yahoo Answers, which is showing more than 50 percent year-over-year growth in pageviews . . .” So there are liable to be a lot of people happy about having convenient mobile access.
As for Wikipedia . . . Wikipedia is actually one of my favorite resources. Before quoting anything, I double-check elsewhere, of course, but as someone who rarely uses his cell phone for anything other than phone calls, I consider its integration with oneSearch a real draw.
If others feel the same way, Yahoo may wind up with a highly successful product on its hands. oneSearch is a young product – it only debuted in January – but it’s already available in well over a dozen countries, and appears to be one of Yahoo’s brightest prospects.
