Is Yahoo! serious about the Web 2.0 ?

You bet!

 

And they’re build­ing a strong team that will extend the web 2.0 to your pocket: after Russ, Chris­t­ian Lind­holm joins the team at Y! as VP of Global Mobile Prod­uct, first based in Lon­don and then mov­ing to Cal­i­for­nia late in 2006.

 

With greater wire­less access, dual-mode hand­sets, big­ger hardrives, bet­ter cam­eras, longer last­ing power, new screen tech­nolo­gies, col­lab­o­ra­tive soft­ware … the web is migrat­ing rapidly to your handheld.

 

This is not about brows­ing. It’s about mobile social­ity. And Yahoo! is mak­ing big strides.

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Google’s not out of the game, though. Their acqui­si­tion of mobile play­ers Dodge­ball and Android (also here) com­bined with Google Local and Google Maps / Earth sig­nals ambi­tions in mobile geoloca­tive ser­vices, includ­ing prox­im­ity social net­works and local adver­tis­ing. (And why not a Plazes play … the social soft­ware locates you through your wifi con­nec­tion). And their recent $4B fundrais­ing, talk of Wi-Fi pro­vi­sion­ing, and VoIp with Google Talk sig­nals their entry into the ISP / Tele­coms space … but also media (rather, infor­ma­tion inter­me­di­a­tion). Of course, there may be much more in the works.

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With open APIs all around, the future looks fun. And things sure move quickly

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Cross-posted to Open­Moo­dle: the Oxford Uni­ver­sity Next Gen­er­a­tion Mobile Appli­ca­tions Forum.