As Google pushes phones, Yahoo zeros in on ad deals

By Eric Auchard

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo mobile chief Marco Boerries is racing to lock down phone distribution deals that could deliver hundreds of millions of advertising customers before Google's own mobile strategy ever takes wing.

Boerries said in an interview that Yahoo's strategy to make advertising on mobile phones as big a market as computer-based Web browsers relies on three-way partnerships involving device makers, network operators and Web services.

Unlike Google, which said on Monday it was building a mobile phone operating system, Yahoo is focusing on mobile advertising deals and has no intention of getting into software design of phones like its Silicon Valley rival.

"The race is going to be who builds the biggest arsenal of partners and numbers of page views," said Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo's Connected Life division. Page views are the way advertisers count online audience ad consumption.

Google appears ready to make a frontal assault on a mobile industry where network operators call the shots about what features appear on phones on their networks. This could one day make Google a major mobile player, but it will take time.

Google risks being distracted by technology rather than being focused on advertising revenue, the lifeblood of both Internet players, Boerries said.

Yahoo offers an online search that makes it easier for phone subscribers to discover Web services. It sees handset deals as enablers of its strategy to strike deals with network operators on ad-supported services.

Investors, however, seem transfixed by the prospect that Google is ready to dominate the mobile Internet the way it already does the computer-based Web, and have pushed its shares to record levels just off $750.