Operators leading mobile search musical chairs

T-Mobile (NYSE:DT) has officially replaced Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) with Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) as its mobile search engine of choice, but Yahoo! isn’t sitting still as Google snatches up the mobile market. Yahoo! has already been refocusing on search’s biggest growth area: mobile phones. Both Google and Yahoo! are putting mobile at the center of their strategies, and the wireless operators are proving their affections can still be won.

First, T-Mobile eschewed its G1 partner Google back in 2008 for Yahoo!, only to ditch them across the board as soon as their exclusive agreement expired. T-Mobile, like Sprint, is back with Google, although Yahoo! stressed that it will continue to provide some of its services, including Yahoo! Mail and Messenger, to T-Mobile, which will also give web2go real estate to Yahoo! news, sports, finance and weather information.

Next, AT&T signed up its first Android smartphone, but opted to use Yahoo! for its embedded search engine, making it the first carrier to not stick with Google on an Android handset. It remains to be seen if AT&T will continue to embed Yahoo! in future phones, but its best seller, the Apple iPhone, defaults to Google instead.

Microsoft’s Bing is still playing a role, too, with an exclusive deal with Verizon Wireless for its BlackBerry handsets. But, VZW has its far share of Google search-enabled Android devices. It is getting to be a confusing market, as carriers put monetizing mobile Web usage ahead of loyalty to a partner.

In a report released last month, consulting firm Deloitte forecasted that mobile search applications will become one of the five most used smartphone applications by the end of this year. That will be driven in part by the fact that on any operator, consumers can easily use whichever search provider they desire through the mobile Web or one of these alternative apps. There may be a workaround, but for most consumers who just use mobile search as a means to an end, they will simply go with what’s there.

At the same time carriers are putting their stakes in the ground, all three of the search giants, as well as a host of smaller players, are focusing their efforts squarely on the mobile platform. Yahoo! has been restructuring its business of late to put mobile at the core, effectively dissolving its separate, siloed mobile division. In the past few weeks, the company has introduced a mobile-oriented blog, unveiled a new social pulse feature on its mobile platform and shed a few of its senior mobile executives, including Mitch Lazar, mobile general manager, who resigned this week.

Google, too, is emphasizing its mobile ambitions. Next week it plans to hold an “educational Webcast” to inform the market of its mobile strategy, which CEO Eric Schmidt promised Mobile World Congress attendees was the most important part of its good intentions.

There are still more questions right now in mobile search: In its never-ending bid to one-up Google, will Apple replace Google with Bing on the iPhone as rumored? Will it change if AT&T loses exclusivity? Will AT&T continue to embed Yahoo! in its four other Android phones coming out this year? Will VZW adopt Microsoft’s first Windows 7 phones with Bing? Hopefully we’ll have some answers soon.

Google is still outperforming its competitors on mobile today, but with all the switch-ups and carrier courting going on, things should get more interesting for all the players involved.

E-mail me at sarah.reedy@penton.com.