Tired with mobile ad revenue to Google and Yahoo!, seven global cell phone operators have joined forces to create their own mobile search engine. The seven operators are Cingular, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia, Telefonica and Vodafone.

Given the operators’ tendencies to create “walled garden” approaches to content, there’s doubt as to whether the operator consortium can pull off a victory. With seven different businesses participating in this project, it is unclear if they’ll develop one engine that is white-labeled to each brand or create an advertising clearinghouse that search services could use to access subscribers.

It remains to be seen how this would succeed as they will be looking to succeed where others have failed, like Microsoft. Some critics have questioned the necessity, as most phone and hand held devices have the ability to search directly from Google or Yahoo! pages. Google as the undisputed leader in the Internet search, has since announced plans to include ad links to all mobile searches, claiming to make their services profitable by 2008.