Russell Shaw over at ZDNet caught a new Google patent filed today revealing their potential plans for mobile search.
I must stress ‘potential plans’ because you just never know if they will follow this roadmap exactly. Now with my caution stated, I DO believe this patent is a good indicator of their future plans simply because it includes many of the options already present in the recently launched Ask Mobile GPS service. Furthermore, unless I missed something fundamental, everything I read was relatively expected and necessary for the proper functionality of local search on mobile phones.
That said, the patent application is detailed and has many great images to drive the point home. Since most commercial websites are bound to have a mobile website (or a compatible one) in 5 years or less this patent may be worth a moment of your time.