Mobile giants plot search engine to rival Google

Some of the biggest mobile phone networks in the World are meeting for high level talks at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona next week.

The talks, which were secret until The Telegraph published details, will detail how the networks can create a mobile phone search engine to rival Google and Yahoo! We understand that Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and Cingular are all involved in the talks.

Call revenues are declining and most networks are trying to find ways to make more money without having to increase prices in the long term. Most make significant income from data services but with Google announcing increased revenue from mobile advertising the networks understandably want a cut from the traffic they are driving.

More than 20 percent of subscribers in the UK will have access to mobile broadband by the end of this year which will no doubt increase the use of mobile search engines and similar applications.

Google and Yahoo! already have deals with mobile networks and are involved with several manufacturers so this move will come as a surprise to them.

The mobile phone industry believes it can create its own search service and retain a greater share of the revenues by developing its own services.

With a customer base of over 600 million users the group clearly have the coverage to offer value to advertisers but the key will be n developing user trust and a quality service. Google has the brand and trust to make people comfortable using its service and most importantly confident in visiting advertisers. A new service would be starting from scratch without this benefit.

One option would be to use existing technology from either Google or Yahoo! to power the search engine in much the same way as the current agreements. With a larger subscriber base the group would have greater buying power and would be able to demand a larger cut.

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