The relationship between operators and Android Market is getting closer. Not only is carrier billing featuring much more prominently on the application store, but so are operator storefronts.

Last year, Orange said that it was giving up on content publishing to focus on content aggregation and distribution instead. Essentially, it pulled the plug on the expensive venture it embarked upon a few years ago to create its own exclusive sports and movie TV channels. As CEO Stephane Richard put it when unveiling the carrier group’s five-year plan in July, Orange does not think of itself as a media group.

Earlier this month, a mobile industry player, handset retailer Carphone Warehouse, broke new ground in the cloud-music-services sector with the launch of Music Anywhere. The service is a “digital locker,” in the sense that it is designed to let users store their music collection in a central place on the internet, which can then be accessed by different devices.

The recent launch of Facebook’s new text-only mobile website, 0.facebook.com, is a good illustration of the kind of non-commercial relationship that online social networks and mobile operators tend to form. Although 53 operators from 45 countries have agreed to waive browsing charges for 0.facebook.com users for at least a year, they are getting no payment in return from Facebook. No money has or will be changing hands between the social network and its 0.facebook.com operator partners.