Yahoo! Sees Comeback With Mobile Search

Google's comparatively light approach to content -- why pay for developing your own, when you can profit from directing people to that of others? -- has worked brilliantly in the sophisticated world of PC navigation.

But in a setting were surfing can be painstaking, the ability to simply route users to a company's own content presents a considerable advantage.

The hallmark Google search box may be less valuable on a mobile device than Yahoo!'s stock of content, which it easily points users to. And Yahoo! has given lots of thought about how users access information on mobile devices compared with how they do so on PCs.

Most prior attempts to port the Internet to mobile devices failed mainly because they sought to only reproduce users' experience on the PC, Boerries says.

For Yahoo!, which has dropped the search ball in the PC-based arena, emerging markets such as mobile devices offer a chance at redemption.

While the company is only now launching an ad ranking system that can compete with Google's, it's the nascent markets that offer Yahoo! a shot at becoming the innovator it was a decade ago.

But the riches that await are clear to Google as well, and the search giant is particularly aggressive when it comes to international markets, where accessing the Internet from mobile devices is more prevalent than in the U.S.