The operators' "secret" plan to destroy Google. Yeah, right.

By now you've probably seen the reports that six European mobile operators plus AT&T are planning "secret" talks to set up a mobile search engine to rival Google. The Telegraph reported that the secret seven might team up with an existing search engine, or might set up their own shared search engine and advertising sales team.

The idea is for the operators to capture the majority of advertising revenue from mobile web search.

It's possible that the report is false, but the Telegraph had some quotes and details that sound credible. (Besides, if it's not true then there would be nothing for people like me to posture abut online.)

As you'd expect, the report is already attracting a lot of commentary online. I won't bother repeating what everyone else is saying, but I'd like to make a few quick observations:

1. Have any of these high-profile operator consortia ever been successful? It's a sincere question, not rhetorical. I can't think of any of them that lived up to their hype. But maybe I missed one. Please post a comment if I did.

2. I don't think the threat to create their own search engine is credible. The investment in infrastructure is too large at this point. So the real play would be to partner with one of the current search companies and squeeze money out of it. Let's see, who's desperate for search share and has a ton of cash? Hello, Redmond.

3. Who starts secret negotiations by leaking the fact that they're being held? Only someone who's inept, or is posturing to create leverage in their discussions with Google.

4. All of this presupposes that the operators can continue to maintain closed gardens, preventing users from going to whichever search engine they like. That worked soooo well for AOL and MSN, didn't it?

5. Why can't these guys negotiate with Google the traditional way, by threatening to sue them?

6. I hope eventually someone will realize that unless we figure out how to make mobile browsing a lot more useful and compelling, there isn't going to be any pile of riches to divide from mobile search.

Search skills

Today I've finally managed to put together a draft of a brief introductory manual on effective search that could be useful to all of our students. That's something I've actually wanted to do for quite some time as I really feel that search skills are very important today. Sadly, search is in my opinion too often oversimplified. It might seem like an easy thing to do - you just type in a few words on Google and bam! here are the most important results - of course right on the first page (nobody bothers to go over the third page, right?). Luckily for us, search engines are quite smart, but I still think that people aren't really aware of how search engines work and how search pages are ranked.

Also, Google does make advanced search really easy - but how many people are aware of that function and know why it can be used? I'm not sure it's so obvious - especially to people that aren't interested in technology, but use computers and the Internet because they have to (either for their work or study).

And writing the right words in Google is just the first challenge - one must also be able to evaluate the quality of search results and especially the quality of single web sites. Can a certain site be trusted? We all know that publishing content to web is now easier than ever before, so how can we tell whom to trust? And then - how can web content be used for school projects, presentations and such? I'm afraid that some of our students still believe that web content is free to use and doesn't need to be cited.

If you're also wondering about similar questions or facing similar issues, I recommend Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial by Joe Barker as a starting point. Of course, there are many other great resources out there, so don't hesitate to use your search skills and find them ;-)