Tired of playing second search engine to Google, Yahoo recently announced its own big mobile play. In early October, the San Francisco-based web giant announced a partnership with Spanish telecom Telefonica to make Yahoo's mobile oneSearch the primary search service for Telefonica customers in 15 countries in Europe and Latin America. The agreement sets up Yahoo to reach a potential 100 million consumers via Yahoo mail and Flickr, in addition to oneSearch.

Yahoo also reached a similar arrangement with six wireless providers in Asia earlier this year to provide oneSearch services in the Pacific Rim.

OneSearch is Yahoo's main mobile search tool, providing location-based results for services plus news and financial information. In early September, Yahoo partnered its oneSearch tool with ELLE to offer search and marketing services related to New York Fashion Week. The partnership will also extend to subsequent fashion weeks in Italy and France.

Earlier this year, Yahoo also launched services for mobile publishers in 19 countries in Latin America, North America, Europe, Asia and the U.K. Its Mobile Ad Network, launched with MobiTV, Opera and go2, allows publishers to choose a variety of ad formats, including display, sponsored links, video or in-game.

There's no chatter yet as to whether Yahoo holds the same aspirations as Google to acquire hardware or build powerful software with the potential to re-write the wireless industry's old, reliable script, but the company is certainly making serious moves in the mobile realm.