Yahoo! announces mobile service

Yahoo Inc announced a new mobile phone service that integrates e-mail, instant messaging and social networks.

Called oneConnect, the service is expected to launch this spring, Marco Boerries, executive vice president for Connected Life at Yahoo, on Tuesday said at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona. Its open architecture means users and other companies can eventually add many other applications to it.

"The key driving force in opening up the platform is putting content into the device. No company can create these ecosystems alone. We have to be open," Boerries said.

Boerries also announced cell phone carrier T-Mobile will offer Yahoo Inc's Internet search service to its European customers in late March, shifting away from Google.

T-Mobile will offer Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger, as well as Yahoo's oneSearch, which provides news, financial information, photos, Web pages and other services.

The announcements was made in Barcelona as Yahoo copes with Microsoft Corporation's unsolicited bid for Yahoo and as Yahoo completed an acquisition of its own, buying online video service Maven Networks Inc for $160 million. Yahoo on Monday rejected Microsoft's offer, originally valued at $44.6 billion, or $31 a share.

On oneConnect, social networks will be integrated into contact lists, which in turn can be used to link into various ways of keeping in touch with friends, or keeping tabs on them, allowing users access to a wide range of services from Yahoo Messenger to Google Talk to AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger.