Telcos plan mobile rival to Google

5 February 2007

The search engine industry is set to expand as telecommunications companies plan a rival mobile phone search engine.

A Telegraph report uncovered details of the secret talks which are to take place at 3SGM, the telecommunications conference in Barcelona this week.

Motivated by Google's recent announcement of improved revenues through mobile phone advertising, the companies want to find alternative ways of generating income.

Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and one American network, Cingular have been named by the report as the principle names taking part in the talks.

They hope to generate income from the advertising deals associated with the search engine industry.

A UK executive at one of the companies involved said to 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."

Google and Yahoo were already developing a similar service for mobile phones with individual telecommunication companies as the mobile internet market looks set for take off over the next five years.

 

 

Category: Google, MSN, Other, Yahoo