Yahoo's Internet Search Service by SMS promises to bring the average American cellphone closer to online media.

On July 6 (2005) Yahoo! launched its SMS Search service in the U.S., after enlisting major mobile operators Cingular, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon. This is a major advancement in more ways than one.

Before this, mobile web searches from Yahoo!, Google, etc. were available only on cellphones that supported WAP, iMode & selected PDA Devices.

Most owners of GPRS / WCDMA enabled cellphones have used Google, Yahoo! or other Internet Search Engines from their cellphones. But Yahoo's SMS Search will make full web searches accessible to everybody with any ol' cellphone.

For good measure, Yahoo! has included in the search results, a link to Yahoo's Mobile Internet service for more data pertaining to search results.

Shortcuts & Keywords
Keeping in mind mobile users, and to minimize usage of the micro sized cellphone keyboards (and improve the overall experience), both Yahoo! & Google have defined shortcuts or keywords, for searches.

These shortcuts are available for both WAP as well as SMS based searches. The shortcuts (or keywords) are similar and designed to make it easy to specify search parameters. For example (Google Keywords): "w" followed by zip code or city will yield the current weather report for that city "pizza" followed by zip code will give a list of pizza parlors "wifi" followed by zip code or city will display the nearest WiFi hotspot

Future of Online
Just as Mobile TV promises to deliver television to more cellular phones, SMS Search technology can bring the billions of web-pages to all cellphone subscribers. And with cellphone subscribers growing at "breakneck" pace, covering the length & breadth of the demographic canvas, the future is guaranteed to be exciting.

The massive potential of such technology can easily be imagined in a diverse population like India.