Google, Yahoo, Watch Out: Wireless Providers May Form Search Rival

Very interesting piece in the Sunday Telegraph asserting that wireless providers Vodafone (VOD), France Telecom (FTE), Telefonica (TEF), Deutsche Telekom (DT), Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia (TI) and AT&T’s (T) Cingular plan to hold “secret high-level talks” at the 3GSM trade show in Barcelona next week to discuss formation of a mobile search service to compete with Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO).

“Faced with declining revenues as calls become cheaper, network operators are determined to secure a large slice of the lucrative search advertising market,” the article asserts.

It’s a little early to get too worried about this; it will not be easy for a consortium to take on Google and Yahoo in search; but remember that the service providers do have the advantage of controlling the mobile experiences of 10s of millions of customers. If they can all agree on an approach, this will be a development to keep an eye on.

Today, Google is down $9.86 at $471.64; Yahoo is off 22 cents at $28.55.