I wondered how Google will directly benefit from the OpenSocial API a few days ago, particularly as more bloggers believe it to be a whole lot of hot air, and now it looks like Yahoo is answering.

That is, on a day that its stock is tanking {down 7%} perhaps because of how Jerry Yang is in the unenviable position of defending his company in Congress for a thing that happened years before he assumed the CEO-ship, Yahoo is securing mobile advertising deals.

Now, call me a crude simpleton but it looks like these kinds of maneuverings are *exactly* what will pad Yahoo’s bottom line.

Reuters has the low-down which involves Yahoo’s mobile chief racing to get Yahoo’s ads in front of hundreds of millions of mobile customers before Google’s android ever sees the light of day — which is scheduled to be the latter half of 2008, practically an eternity in geek-years.

In fact the breadth of these deals seem to be pretty … well, global.

Yahoo already has deals to feature a package of services like search, e-mail and mapping on limited handsets from major phone makers, including Nokia, Motorola, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and HTC — every top name except Sony Ericsson.

Carrier partners include Vodafone in Britain and Hutchison Whampoa’s 3 across Europe, and a recent far-reaching deal Web search and advertising deal with Spain’s Telefonica that covers 100 million users in several European countries and much of the Latin American region.

Yahoo has also signed advertising deals with six operators across Southeast Asia and India. North Asia is next.

It has been in talks with operators in Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Malaysia -- markets that boast some of the highest mobile penetration rates — for new service tie-ups, President Susan Decker said on a tour of Asia last month.

[emphasis mine]

Furthermore, there’s nothing to stop Yahoo from using the Android platform to help deploy its ads and ‘mobilize’ these ad deals that were made 18 months before Android ever ships out.

“If ‘Android’ is truly open source, we can take everything out there,” Boerries said of the outside possibility Yahoo might use Google phone software and run Yahoo services over the devices. “Nothing prevents me from taking it,” he said.

Deliciously Machiavellian, and simple too.  Google pwns my life as much as the next geek, but I also have a soft spot for the underdog, which Yahoo! clearly is.  In this case, and in this instance (not like how Yahoo folded like a cheap suit for the Chinese government), they’ll get my vote FTW.

I am. I have been following the discussion throughout the day (when I was able to), and it seems like no one specifically knows what, perhaps, is the biggest unspoken question is about Google’s Android open-source mobile stack platform.

You know.

What’s in it for Google?

Yes, I know that there’s been a lot of handwaving around “well, it will allow Google to deliver more ads on phones — that’s their strategy, duh!”

And to that I guess I might believe that if the platform wasn’t open-source, except it is, meaning that although Google is helping spear head this coalition of the mobile-willing, and sure, Mr. Rubin gives us Google-centered examples of what Android *could* do — well, Google can’t just “throw in ads” where it wants to.

I mean, people will be developing their own software build upon this open-source standard, and it will be up to them if they need Google to help monetize their business with ads. And business being business? I suspect that no one actually wants to turn to the 1000 ton Gorilla in the room unless they absolutely need to.

I mean, if there’s another monetization strategy in mind I haven’t yet heard of it.

Or, if there’s a gotcha clause in all of this that requires partnering with Google, I also haven’t yet heard of it.

But it seems peculiar to me that Google has spent all this time and manpower (although they certainly have the wherewithal to do it) to develop something that it can’t directly and explicitly benefit. It either smacks of something deliciously devious (which would be awesome), awesomely altruistic (anyone skeptical?), or neither of the two, which would be puzzling (but possible: Dodgeball anyone?)

Other skeptics:

• Om Malik: Who wonders if this all isn’t PR smoke that’s been blown up our metaphorical behinds
• Wall Street Journal: Who queries if the Alliance will actually develop software once Android becomes available
• Fake Steve Jobs: Who ponders if all of this, coupled with OpenSocial isn’t just reactionary {cough, cough — Facebook}