India's Bharti ties up with Google for mobile-search services

Source : www.marketwatch.com
Dated : 30/11/2006

Bharti Airtel Ltd. (532454.BY), India's largest mobile phone service provider by subscribers, and Google Inc. (GOOG) Thursday announced a partnership that would allow Bharti's customers to use the Google search engine.

"Mobile users outnumber PC users in India by a factor of six," said a Bharti statement, quoting Manoj Kohli, president of Bharti Airtel.

Google will incorporate advertisements when Bharti's mobile customers use the search engine, the statement added.

Kohli and Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, vice president of Google's Asia-Pacific and Latin American Operations, held a joint press conference on the tie up. Both declined to comment on the revenue expected from the advertisements.

Bharti Airtel had 28.61 million mobile service customers at the end of Oct. 31, 2006, according to the company statement.