Friday, January 11, 2008

Yahoo mess up again

This week Yahoo launched the latest version of Yahoo Go 3.0 at the CES.

So yet again I went and tried to get the Java Application to work on my Symbian handset, and yet again they do not have a version that works with my Sony Ericsson. Oh well I thought I can upgrade the version that I am already running on two other handsets. You guessed it..they do not have versions that work on my Windows Smartphone or Nokia N93i. But both of these already have Go 2.0 so WTF.

Now when Go 2.0 was launched Christian Lindholm had a team in Europe who were developing the application. Last year the European Mobile group became no more than a sales team and the development was centralised to America. This means that Go 3.0 will be just as poor as 2.0 when it comes to customer uptake and that the number of handsets supported will be closer to the square route of -1.

The problem is that Go 3.0 is a great tool when it comes to simple mobile data services for someone like my other half who just wants a simple portal on her handset. After years of trying to get her to use her mobile I gave up and have left Her to use the handset as something that he controls and uses on the basis of an A&E device. Over the last year She has started to adopt some mobile services as she starts to communicate with our Twins who are now at Senior School. This has seen Her experiment with more and more things on her handset what she would now love to be able to do is check her Yahoo email account and some simple surfing Yahoo Go would be ideal for her but she has a Sony Ericsson K850i and it is not supported.

If Yahoo were serious about the Mobile sector then it would be working with everyone who makes mobile phones so that the software works on the handset even if it is not installed at the time of purchase. All the time that it fails to allign itself with the European Mobile community Yahoo has as much potential as Motorola in its post Razr stage.