Last year, Vodafone signed a deal with Google to insert its services into the carriers portals. The nature of the deal wasn’t very clear until recently.

Some EU portals will progressively add a Google search box right on the top of their homepage. The first one is Vodafone Netherlands, which launched Google search within their Vodafone live! portal on May 21. The search engine allows users to search within Google’s traditional web index (and see transcoded web pages) but also within their mobile search index.

Of course, Google will insert sponsored ads within the results, and I heard that this is how Vodafone will make money.

Some reliable sources told me that Google will soon be added in more Vodafone portals, such as the UK, France, Germany and Spain.