Angela who? Vodafone search fails to identify Merkel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel stands beside a slogan reading 'your world' at the exhibit of German Telekom AG during her opening tour at the CeBIT computer fair in the northern German town of Hanover March 4, 2008.

HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) - She may be Germany's most prominent woman, but Chancellor Angela Merkel found Vodafone's new image search software could not identify her.

"I am not in the database," Merkel said when testing Vodafone's Otello, a search engine that uses images instead of words, at the CeBIT technology trade fair in Hanover on Tuesday.

"That's a major gap -- please update," Merkel quipped.

Otello users take a photo on their mobile phone and send it via MMS (multimedia messaging service) to a service number.

When successful, it sends back a text message identifying the image either directly or in the form of Web links.

Starting Monday, Vodafone is conducting a trial to use Otello with Europe's best-selling tabloid Bild, owned by Berlin-based publisher Axel Springer.

(Reporting by Nicola Leske and Arno Schuetze; Editing by Alastair Sharp)