Google goes to the Zoo, the Optus Zoo

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 14 September 2006 13:39

Your IT - Home IT

In a move likely aimed at countering Telstra's ability to offer Sensis search functionality to its mobile customers, Optus Mobile is to offer access to Google search  from the home page of its Optus Zoo mobile content service.

Warren Hardy, managing director Optus Consumer, said the company saw the move as "a major step forward in making Australian consumers more mobile in their day-to-day lives...Our customers can be out and about and still have the tools to find a restaurant, see movie times or even answer an elusive trivia quiz question."

Telstra offers rather more cumbersome access to Sensis search services: users can text a message, in a specified format to 191SMS (191 767) to retrieve personal and business listings, movie information and surf, snow and weather reports. However it recently entered into trial with Broad Investments' (ASX: BRO) MTX subsidiary to trial its Pocket Portal online web authoring environment for Java and Symbian clients to improve access to this service. Few details of the trial have been given. However if successful it would likely be expanded to give access to wide range of Sensis search services.

Optus described the move as "an Australian first," but gave no indication that the deal was exclusive. Richard Kimber, Google’s managing director of sales and operations for South East Asia, said: “The partnership demonstrates our commitment to making the mobile phone a more convenient and dependable device for accessing useful and relevant information while on the go."


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