Yahoo! has gained a deal winning over search giant Google in Germany with the signing of multi-year partnership with O2. Noticeably Google was O2’s search partner earlier.
O2 Germany inked the deal based on the benefit Yahoo brought to O2 in U.K. and T-Mobile in Germany. In 2007 Yahoo signed deal with Telefonica. Though Telefonica owns O2 but under that deal Yahoo search was only put on Telefonica phones belonging to Latin America and O2 in UK. O2 Germany was excluded from the deal because at that time they had signed deal with Google. Seeking Yahoo’s strategies which encouraged users to stay on O2’s mobile portal for longer time lured O2 Germany to stamp the deal.
Not much details of the deal is yet disclosed except that the deal is multi-year deal which includes links on O2’s portal to some of Yahoo!’s most popular mobile properties including Yahoo new mobile homepage, Flickr, Yahoo Eurosport, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Weather, Yahoo News and Yahoo Mail. It also gives Yahoo authority to provide sponsored search mobile advertising.
Mitch Lazar, managing director of Yahoo Mobile Europe said: “We don’t believe consumers want millions of links. It’s why we have this hunger to reinvent and innovate around mobile because it’s a place we could differentiate and redefine.” Yahoo skims off the results showing top results relevant to mobile users.
With the increase in smartphones arena search providers seeks an expanding opportunity in mobile search as that would earn them more share of advert revenue.