As Melly wrote yesterday, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) announced it would be introducing a new advertising platform to U.S. mobile Yahoo! customers. No, this one isn't for the web at large, but the web "at small."

In addition to Google's announcement that it would be selling advertising space through its AdWords program so that targeted ads would show up next to Google searches performed using the Google wireless portal for mobile devices and cellphones (www.google.com/xhtml), Yahoo! (wap.yahoo.com) appears to be getting in that same game now for U.S. customers -- furthering its previous introduction of mobile ads in Japan and the U.K.

Most U.S. users cannot imagine searching the mobile web on their cellphones on a regular basis yet, but that doesn't mean it's not happening. In fact, U.S. wireless users are way behind most of the world in terms of wireless technology and fast data streams to our cellular phones. Europe's been the perennial leader here, but Japan and South Korea have had fast wireless phones with larger color screens years before we even had the first sign of these technologies here in the U.S.

In yet another innovative product, it looks like Google has made live traffic maps available for viewing directly on a mobile phone screen, according to this Reuters story. Google appears to be trying to release a product almost every single week these days. With Google's mobile live traffic maps being offered in 30 major U.S. cities right at launch, this is further evidence that Google is trying to make itself indispensable to the customer from every modern information angle -- personal computer and mobile phones are the top two, yes?

By visiting www.google.com/gmm on a mobile phone with a built-in browser (almost any cellphone these days), the application can be downloaded and immediately used. Even if you don't live in one of the 30 major cities listed as available right now, there is partial information available on many other cities as well. With Yahoo! and Google battling it out on every front -- including the mobile space which will only heat up further -- the battle lines are already being drawn.

By contract, mobile phones in Japan are used more than computers for Internet access (and have been for a while). As wireless data networks become more prevalent here in the U.S., expect more innovative mobile offerings from Google -- a fact that CEO Eric Schmidt has hinted at several times recently.

Google Mobile, long available in the U.S., has now made many Google services available to British customers via mobile phones. Gmail, Google News and even the Google Personalized Homepage are now available to wireless subscribers in the UK using just their handsets: no computer needed. Google appears to want to own your cellphone screen time just like it does with your Internet search time -- and GOOG investors would be wise to pay attention to the Internet search's giant's moves in this area.

Google has taken the bold design step of trying to duplicate the experience (and presentation) of its online services like Gmail and News into the tiny, two-inch screen real estate that most wireless phones now have. After having checked out Google Mobile -- available by just visiting www.google.com on your phone's browser -- I think the company has it down pretty well. Google's infamous easy-to-use and uncluttered interface on a computer's web browser is pretty much the modus operandi it's taken with porting its web services to fit on a mobile phone screen.

With Google launching its mobile offerings in full force in Britain, what else is left? The hard markets, that's what. It's pretty easy to port English-language web-based services to a mobile platform (I guess, since Google sure makes it look easy), but porting its services to Chinese, French, Italian, and other languages may prove a tad harsher -- and who knows if Google is preparing to do this. But, with billions of wireless customers around the globe speaking languages other than English, perhaps the larger markets are truly ahead for Google Mobile.

With wireless phones becoming globally more used than personal computers, how are the web's leading internet players dealing with adding their services to the phone screens of the billions of wireless users in the world? There are literally hundreds of millions more phones in use in the world today than computers -- and in the pacific rim area, mobile phones are probably used more than PCs to access internet content, seeing as though wireless networks are faster and much more advanced than they are here in the U.S.

With this incredible market opportunity, who is leading the pack? Google, Inc.'s CEO, Eric Schmidt, has repeated said in investor meetings and press releases that Google continues to concentrate on mobile offering as a priority area. The sheer amount of mobile devices (phones) should make any CEO of any internet service or product attentive to the burgeoning marketplace of mobile internet access and content.

With Google having a pretty large offering of almost universally-accessible mobile content, it seems to be taking the lead -- although competitor Yahoo! is not standing still and has an equally-beefy mobile content offering, albeit more device-constrained than Google. Google's mobile strategy appears to follow its corporate mantra: Make the content easy to use, navigate and universally accessible. That means Google Maps, Google News, Google Gmail, Google.com and even the Google Personalized Homepage are accessible from any recent mobile phone -- on any global wireless network -- with the standard xTHML miniature web browser.

It's no surprise that Google's commanding lead in the internet search department is pretty solid -- and growing by the day. Its formula for success has been relevant search results in a very timely fashion (in milliseconds) combined with an advertising platform that works incredibly well, and one in which customers actually use and find value withing. Hint to television and radio: adapt to this model or become extinct. Wait -- that's happening already.

Anyway, with many more mobile phones on the planet than computers, will the next battlefront for Google take place on the two-inch screen of your mobile phone? Most likely, it will. Google brass has highlighted the mobile front many times recently, and it you look at the numbers, they're probably correct. Billions of mobile phones are in use today the world over, and higher-speed mobile data networks are being installed in the Pacific Rim, Europe and here in the U.S. (Cingular Wireless and Verizon Wireless, to name a few).

This article over at the Wall Street Journal talks about the mobile universe as the next big challenge for established competitors in the internet space, and I have to agree. There is quite a bit of work to be done -- from the user interface to data speeds to battery life -- but if the mobile phone (or device) can become the next search tool of choice, you can bet Google will be racing to be there first as the de-facto solution.