Yahoo! Sees Comeback With Mobile Search

Marco Boerries, immaculately dressed in suit, tie and matching black handkerchief, is in sharp contrast to Yahoo!'s(YHOO) garish, purple-plastered, Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters.

Boerries, senior vice president of Yahoo!'s connected-life division, should stand out. His unit, responsible for the Internet giant's efforts in the rapidly emerging areas outside of PCs, such as mobile devices or gaming consoles, again took center stage with announcements of Yahoo!'s new initiatives in the mobile space.

The company on Monday introduced a new ad platform on its Yahoo! Mobile Web service in 19 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas, and beefed up its high-profile oneSearch service, which makes it easier for mobile users to find content on their devices.

The new additions to oneSearch include features that allow users to search directly from maps and enable them to share search results and news articles with others.

The announcement also comes on a day when rival Google(GOOG) announced that it had agreed to a deal with Vodafone(VOD), the world's largest mobile phone network, to provide its own mobile maps. This demonstrates that the race is on in this lucrative space.

During Google's fourth-quarter conference call at January end, CEO Erich Schmidt said that the company believed that mobile ads would be much more richly rewarded than those delivered to stationary devices.