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Google veers between being the cheerleader for a disruptive mobile internet model that will relegate carriers to bitpipes, and recognizing that it needs their powerful route to market to succeed on the phone. In the cellco dominated environment of Mobile World Congress, CEO Eric Schmidt was showing his carrier friendly side, focusing heavily on a joint effort to deliver the next generation of services. This was not enough for Vodafone though. Just hours earlier, CEO Vittorio Colao had warned that Google was too powerful in the market - and given that Vodafone traditionally uses its MWC keynote to alert the world to its key issues, the ecosystem will listen hard.

Colao warned that regulators were likely to look into any companies with 70% or 80% share, as Google had in mobile search. "I would like to have more competition everywhere. At the moment you have three players [Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing] in the fixed space, you have two in the mobile, but only kind of one," he said. He did not call for an antitrust probe outright, but said it was important for the European Commission, and to some extent the US FCC, to "examine the whole value chain" and ensure their rules boost competition.

Of course, this was not just about theory or principles. It was about carriers maintaining their position in the mobile internet value chain, a battle in which Vodafone is the most vocal of all, and most determined to create its own ecosystem and value. And clearly, in that context, Google represents the forces of darkness - even though Colao added: "I want to be clear we use Google, we like Google."

That tiny olive branch was followed by the clear statement that Vodafone was considering changing its default search engine, a huge opportunity for Yahoo - already used by Vodafone in some markets. He added: "But you can't develop a healthy data environment if you do not have healthy competition at all levels."

Schmidt came on stage in more conciliatory mood. He did not respond directly to Colao's comments but took the theme that Google wanted to partner with operators and application developers to ensure a strong consumer experience and a profitable business.

"Ultimately, these businesses will succeed to the degree that they stay end user-focused," Schmidt said. "And the best partnerships start from that, and not from dividing the industry or restricting what people do."

During questions, Schmidt disagreed pointedly with one delegate's comment that Google was trying to make wireless operators "dumb pipe providers" and insisted: "We feel very strongly that we depend on the success of the carrier business. We need a sophisticated network for security and load balancing." So, smart pipes rather than dumb pipes perhaps .... but this hardly sounded like an equal position in terms of devices, apps and software revenues.

Schmidt was also keen to reassure cellcos that he did not want to compete with them on the smart pipe side, despite the investment in Clearwire and, more recently, its fiber network trial. Like other Google steps into infrastructure such as its metrozone activities and threat to acquire 700MHz spectrum, these moves are designed to stimulate mobile broadband activity and expertise.

On one point he echoed Colao almost directly - that operators would have to adopt tiered pricing in the world of massive mobile data volumes.

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