I attended the poorly attended ad:tech Chicago this week, just long enough to hear Yahoo!’s Michael Bayle, Senior Director, Global Mobile Advertising get a sound thrashing from his counterparts at Google, Tribune Media, Cars.com and Local.com.

During a session entitled Tactical Search: Local and Mobile, Mr. Bayle was asked by an audience member if he thought Apple’s iPhone 3G was a “game changer”. His response was nothing short of telling why Google’s mobile dominance is in no danger of slipping to Yang & Co. He expressed that as a device it is very compelling, but that the phone itself was not the beginning of a new revolution in cell phones and that it actually was annoying to do the “finger spread” that iPhone users employ when sliding through pages they are viewing on the phone. His denial of Apple’s iPhone as a “game changer” was based in the fact that other cell phone companies are coming out with phones that mimic the iPhone’s user interface and that the real game changer is yet to come based on how users integrate mobile phones into their daily routine.

His comments were immediately jumped on by Alison Scholly, VP, GM, Chicago Tribune Interactive who rebuffed him for not looking at how the iPhone has changed the game by forcing phone manufacturers to change their “game” and develop new phones. Bruce Crair, President and COO of Local.com also joined in by adding that the iPhone allows users to use their mobile device more like a remote computer instead of just a communications device dedicated to text and voice utility.

Also on the panel was Google’s Deepak Anand, Mobile Marketing Manager, who could not help from commenting that as applications grow for the iPhone, so will the demand for advertisers to want to play in this space. (If you want to see what Mr. Anand has to say about Google’s mobile plans, read his mobile manifesto.). This proabably explains that when the moderator, Scott Linzer, Director of Search Marketing, AKQA asked the room of 35 or so if they had used Yahoo’s Go for mobile only a smattering of hands went up, but when asked if they had used Google’s mobile search, Maps and other mobile platform apps from Google, nearly the entire room’s hands shot up.

Yahoo! may not see the iPhone as a game changer, but apparently the rest of the industry has different thoughts. Maybe it is because of their lack of functional software platform and operating system for mobile devices like Google’s Android. Or maybe it is because by seeing the iPhone as a game changer, this would make Yahoo! admit that they are so far behind in the mobile space with regards to getting any type of loyalty to their mobile apps such as Yahoo’s oneSearch as part of it’s Yahoo Go 3.0 release.

Mr. Bayle did ask the audience if they had heard of Search Monkey, most did not lift their arms. And when he went on to explain that Yahoo! has added Voice Recognition Search, powered by Vlingo Corp., most in the audience reacted as if they had never heard of such an innovation. I guess Google is just better at the PR thing than Yahoo!. The voice recognition search is a “game changer”, but it seems no one is talking about it.