After a couple of boring talks by operators (the buzzword in that world: ‘market segementation’), Yahoo’s Mitch Lazar is up.

– “Mobility is absolutely core to Yahoo’s business”

– He flashes their “Vision” slide – says “to connect users with people and things regardless of connection and device” or something like that

Social platforms
– identity
– recommendations
– relationshops
– reputation
– …

– He’s remembering to be politically correct, talking not about Nokia phones but “Nokia multimedia computers” ;)

– Yahoo Answers has over 60 million registered users

– Search is a ‘very different paradigm on the mobile phone’. Most popular sites will have mobile-specific sites, rest will be transcoded

– Yahoo Vodafone deal makes Yahoo the exclusive advertiser

– The Web 1.0 vs. 2.0 slide: Operators still live in the 1.0 world of walled gardens. “Consumers have the key to escape, but they need to configure their GPRS settings and are faced with huge data charges.”

– Another problem: fragmentation of handsets. 5 different browsers on phones

– Yahoo’s offer to operators. Quotes Jazz musician Charles Mingus: “Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creative.”

– Yahoo Go to ship this spring on S60. Now announcing also Yahoo Go on three new S40 devices.

Summary of the talk:
* Mobile is key to Yahoo
* Search needs to be different
* The client experience is vital. It’s simple
* Mobile advertising

Interesting comment by an operator representative during Q&A: “You are taking away our revenues by introducing free email and instant messaging. Maybe if you tried to work with us to monetize these services using the monetizing mechanisms we have in place, then we might be more willing to let you in.”

Lazar’s response: “We understand that you have an existing business and we want to figure out how we can protect it. Many mobile operators are realizing they don’t know how to do the internet community thing. They’re realizing they might have to partner.”