The battleground is expanding!!

Locked in a head on battle to become the most used & most popular portal on internet, Yahoo!, Google & MSN have been fighting for the top spot for the browsers on computers, but with the mobile services coming along, mobile devices getting better technology juice everyday, the battleground is expanding.

About an year ago, Yahoo! launched Y!Go, a software suite for mobile devices which allowed the users to access Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Mail & other services anywhere!! This software had mixed reactions from people, some even went on to attacking Yahoo’s VP of Global Mobile Products & the software not because of any shortcomings(in a beta software) but to merely write a sensational piece for a news website & to quench their sadistic thirst!! Maybe Yahoo! refused to employ the writer!!

Anyways, I got my own Symbian S60 mobile(Nokia N70 Music Edition) last december & Y!Go came pre-loaded on it. After a quick install it was ready to go. My first impressions weren’t bad at all, it surely looked good as I tried out the Y!Messenger & Y!Mail. After the initial tests, I didn’t get around to use it again until recently. But the software doesn’t seem to like my regular mobile operator(I used another SIM with GPRS earlier), so I was looking for any updates etc. on Y!Go website when I came across the Y!Go 2.0 Gamma version & the website said that its a limited thing!! Don’t know about the “limit” of it but I sure got in on first try & installed the Java application on my mobile & started it.

A first look at it & it certainly looked better. Soon it asked me to select an access point for GPRS & it was all loaded up. The interface looks pretty cool with a horizontal service switcher at bottom which includes OneSearch, Mail, Weather, Sports, Finance, Maps, News, Entertainment and also includes Flickr!!! Whats missing is Messenger which I think many(including me) would like to have even if that means sacrificing some trival & unimportant stuff like Finance & Sports!!

The email feature is quite basic but still its good enough for reading up important emails & sending of a quick one when you are on the move. The sports & news features keep you updated on whats going on, even if you are out of your city or country!! If you have snapped a photo, you can upload it to your Flickr account easily & even see your or your contacts’ photos and any activity(comments etc.) on them. Since this service is still under testing, I do think that this will improve with more stuff coming in & current features getting better.

But what about Google, some may ask! Well, the search giant is not far behind. They’ve recently revealed their own portal & also have come up with a mobile application for Gmail. Just go to gmail.com/app in your mobile’s browser and if your mobile platform is supported then it’ll give you a link to download the software.

After installing it, you would be able to login via your Gmail account details and a typical Gmail clean interface will load in the Java application that allows you to go through your Inbox & also lets you customise what views you would like to see, like some or all of your labels which will let you sort your email, and a minimalistic compose screen which lets you compose new emails or replies to an existing email. The features are indeed basic, no flashy stuff, the interface is also neat & clean, a typical Gmail interface which is fast!! But I’ve no doubt that this application will expand in future & become a Y!Go like suite, just like it happened with the Google website.

MSN is still to enter this race, I think for now its only on Windows Mobile but for any serious competition, it’ll need to support multiple platforms, especially Symbian. But regardless of what happens & who wins the race, the user will always be a winner, long live competition! :tup: