Acquisition to Ease Mobile Portal Navigation

MotionBridge, a developer of technology that makes Internet portal navigation and search faster and easier for data-enabled cell phone users, has been acquired by Microsoft. The company plans to implement the technology on a future Windows Live site, which will help it appeal to mobile users, and Microsoft will also offer the technology to cellular operator partners, which could help them obtain more users for their own portals.

The Problem with Microbrowsers

Browsing is difficult on a phone because of the small screen, lack of mouse and keyboard, and the differences in Web content standards for phone vs. PC browsers. Even though Microsoft and other vendors offer tools to help developers create Web sites and portals designed specifically for the “microbrowsers” on phones, the screen and input device limitations still make the user experience awkward for all but the simplest sites: users often have to wade through page after page of painfully slow menus and results, and entering text using numeric keypads is slow and cumbersome. For this reason, microbrowser-compatible Web sites are still rare, and most of those that do exist have not been sufficiently compelling.