Mobile operators plan to face down Google, Yahoo!

IN A REPEAT of last year's mobile industry initiative on IM, a gang of seven leading GSM operators are set to announce a similar move regarding mobile search.

At the 3GSM conference in Barcelona last year, the networks operators backed Personal IM as the way they'd offer Instant Messaging to mobile phone users.

The aim was to prevent handing the whole market to an outsider - such as Microsoft with its Messenger product. At this year's event next week - according to a report in the Sunday Telegraph, the Gang are going to focus on mobile search.

The assumption being made by the newspaper is that the operators don't want to hand all of the advertising from mobile search - such as selling sponsored links - over to the likes of a Google or a Yahoo!

However, the INQ suspects it may go further than just advertising revenues. The results of a Google search are still too unfocussed to help handset users find the mobile site they need.

However, if searches became more predictive - as with T9 and texting for example - then mobile phone users would be more likely to make better use of the mobile internet.

Plus, if the operators could agree on a way that location was allied to searching, then quicker results could be delivered to handset users too.

For example, if 'airport' was used in the string and the handset was connected to a cell near Heathrow, then more relevant results could be achieved more quickly.

It's unclear how successful any joint initiative over mobile search might be, though. The attempt to persuade major companies to build special .mobi sites for the mobile internet appears to be floundering. µ