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January 8, 2007

Yahoo Go is No Go

Yahoo Go -- the company's new mobile search, etc. portal thingie unveiled just now at CES -- looks nice, especially (speaking for myself) the Flickr integration, but two things:
  1. It doesn't work on Treos. That puts me out of loop right away.
  2. I'm uneasy with all these context switching apps for mobile devices. I mentioned this before in the context of Google's Gmail applet, but the same criticism applies to Yahoo Go. I don't want to have to continually change apps to do stuff. I live in my browser, even on mobile, so make your tool work there.
So ... fix those two problems and you have yourself something. More seriously, this business of portable apps is a real dilemma. You can't do much interesting in current mobile browsers, but I really, really don't want to get into having to flip back and forth between myriad mobile apps. Please don't make me do it.

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Comments

1. Comment by Leigh -- January 8, 2007 @ 3:13 PM

From one entrepreneurs perspective the issues with mobile phone apps; very enlightening…

">Why iContact Failed

2. Comment by Leigh -- January 8, 2007 @ 3:15 PM

Sorry the url didn't work....

here it is (without my attempt at making it a link)

http://coloradostartups.com/2006/11/22/life-in-the-deadpool/

3. Comment by Jared Hanson -- January 8, 2007 @ 5:11 PM

You are right on with this point. Managing desktop-installed software is a big enough chore, and mobile software is even more so. That's one of the factors that make web applications so enticing, zero install and automatic upgrades.

Mobile applications need to move back into the browser. Of course, its the carriers that are preventing this, with confusing data plans and the desire to nickel-and-dime. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this situation is going to change anytime soon.

4. Comment by Edward Vielmetti -- January 8, 2007 @ 5:59 PM

It doesn't work on my 7100t - even though Google seems to have managed to wedge both mobile GMail and Google Mobile Maps. More's the pity.

5. Comment by Mathew Ingram -- January 8, 2007 @ 6:41 PM

I couldn't agree more, Paul. Switching apps on a mobile every time you want to do something is a gigantic pain. Why we need to recreate the desktop/menu metaphor on a device that is one one-hundredth the size is beyond me.

6. Comment by greg cannon -- January 9, 2007 @ 6:43 AM

Doesn't work on my Q. For the most part, except for BlackBerry users, anyone with a smart phone -- the natural first-wave for this service -- is being told to toss off. Silly...