Nothing points out the flaws in a mobile browser like attempting to quickly open it up and run a search for something. If you’re using the carrier’s default WAP homepage, the built in search often doesn’t search past things that will make the carrier money. If you’re trying to use a standard search engine, the results take forever to load and any elements of the page that render correctly are little miniature blessings.
Yahoo’s oneSearch is one of the few search engines that manages to take away the massive suck factor from the process. Rather than just dumping a list of results on you, it uses your queries (and, if suitable, your location) to figure out what you’re looking for and provide answers directly. For example: Entering a recently released movie title will precede the results with local showtimes, while “NBA” will lead with scores for any active NBA games.
Canada’s largest carrier, Rogers Wireless, is the first in North America to recognize this. In addition to Yahoo’s mobile site and the Yahoo! Go application, all Rogers/Fido customers can now use oneSearch straight off the default Rogers WAP portal.
For those of us in the US, our rep at Yahoo says the company expects AT&T to integrate oneSearch into their portal sometime in the near future.