Just when it seemed that Google had solidified their foothold as T-Mobile’s default search engine (given the release of the G1 Android phone), Yahoo is waving their finger and saying “not so fast!” Even as Yahoo stock prices tumble from a lofty $30.00+ per share down to $9-ish, they have scored a sweet deal with T-Mobile, their Yahoo OneSearch search engine winning as the default search engine on T-Mobile’s handsets. This deal will not affect the Google-based G1 at this time, but it’s still remarkable that Yahoo won out over the seemingly-impervious Google. According to Rob Jackson over at Phandroid:
While Google is (according to most) the dominantly better search engine, that doesn’t matter so much on mobile phones. Consumers are much less likely to download and use applications and extras on their mobile phones and are MUCH more likely to go with the default capabilities. Its the same reason Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has dominated the Browser Wars for so long… and that same initial real estate stakes era is occurring in the mobile world as we speak.
Even though it’s not affecting the G1 now, will this win by Yahoo affect the G1 in the future? Is it really true that people don’t care very much what search engine is offered on their phone?
[Phandroid]