Search giant Google is setting up the stage for its biggest push into the U.S. mobile market, in a plan, which delicately straddles the line among partnering and competing with the chief cell phone operators.
Last week, Google signed up its most important deal with a U.S. wireless operator to date. Sprint Nextel would as well incorporate the company’s mobile services with the carrier’s new 4G WiMax network. Google says its strategies, whether they be to partner or to likely to compete with cell phone carriers, are all about offering Internet access.
Google has struck deals with huge mobile providers in Asia and Europe, such like Vodafone and China Mobile, but Sumit Agarwal, product manager for Google Mobile, agrees that wireless operators in the U.S. have hesitated when it comes to acceptance Google as a partner. Still, Agarwal thinks that U.S. cell phone companies would soon come around.