This will be worth watching play out. It would be silly for mobile phone makers to not be digging deeply into better providing mobile search services.

Mobile phone firms seek their own search engine
Katie Allen
Monday February 5, 2007
The Guardian

Some of the world's biggest mobile phone networks will use a conference next week to discuss creating their own mobile phone search engine to rival services from Google and Yahoo!

Big players including Telefonica-owned O2 and Vodafone will convene at 3GSM in Barcelona to consider the merits of a new service for the whole industry which can tap into nascent mobile advertising revenues.

One option would be to ask an existing search engine, possibly Google or Yahoo!, to power a service for all the networks. It is thought the businesses's collective clout would secure a bigger portion of advertising revenues in return for giving the engine's operator and its advertisers a wider subscriber base. A source close to one operator said: "The larger operators would need to be on board for it to be viable because that would make it a de facto standard, then you also have the benefit of economies of scale." [Article continues]

If I were to predict, Google will win a big partnership and succeed. Yahoo will win a lesser partnership and fail dismally, although it will take them at least three years of thrashing about nothing to fail. And someone will find profitable success with neither Google nor Yahoo.

Technorati Tags: Google, Yahoo, search engines, mobility