Operators Seeking to Bypass Web Search Giants

Several large telecoms groups are reported to be collaborating on a mobile search engine which they will use to bypass reliance on the likes of Google for customer searches. Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and one American network, Cingular are the networks reported to be planning a meeting at 3GSM to debate the collaboration.

The UK newspaper, The Telegraph reports that the companies are concerned that reliance on 3rd party companies for mobile searches could leave them outside the online advertising market, currently dominated by Google.

One of the ideas up for discussion is to build an independent white label platform with a single shared advertising sales team, running across several networks.

A UK executive at one of the companies involved told The Telegraph "There is a big play in mobile search that we need to be part of, and we are exploring those options at a very high level."

Yahoo has already signed contracts with Vodafone and T-Mobile, while Google has been targetting getting placement inside the handsets themselves."

Posted to the site on 5th February 2007