Yahoo says Google needs diversity
Last month Carol Bartz lambasted Google for its lack of diversity and its focus on search.
Reported on the BBC’s website, Bartz is quoted as saying that Google will have to “do a lot more than search”.
Within the US market Yahoo has 17% compared to Google’s 65%, this probably supports her opinion that Google focus on search, they’re, arguably, the biggest search engine in the World so they want to make the most of the situation.
Yahoo is using Bing to power its searches meaning Yahoo and Bing have, effectively, joined forces to help combat Google’s dominance. So, Yahoo seems just as concerned about improving their search engine share as any other.
Bartz stated that search “is only half our business; it’s 99.9% of their business. They’ve got to find other things to do.”
Yahoo has the largest market share in online display advertising, provides media contents and news (Yahoo! Sports/Finance/Movies etc), commerce services (Yahoo! Shopping/Travel) and internet based services with domains and web hosting.
Yahoo has been criticised for under using recent acquisitions and sites. Techcrunch, a technology blog, stated that Yahoo is the place where “start-ups go to die”.
Bartz accepted that Facebook and Google would overtake Yahoo for time visitors spent on site but that Yahoo’s broad portfolio would be Yahoo’s ace in the hole in the long term.
With accusations being levelled at Yahoo that they can’t provide all their sites and facets with enough attention then if Google does decide to compete with Yahoo in terms of increasing it’s portfolio then could Google take it’s eye off the SEO ball?
Unlikely. With more and more businesses and people realising the potential of the internet and search engines Google has an increasing base of users. With the other search engines struggling to compete with Google they can relax but if you follow their blog you can see that they are constantly striving to improve their searches.
A more appropriate question would probably be: how big will Google become?
With more businesses moving away from paper based advertising to the internet, the power will be in the hands of the strongest internet brand. At the moment that would probably be Google, though Facebook is becoming (or, has become depending on your view) a powerhouse though it has been hit with negative news stories over the last year.
Maybe Yahoo has a larger portfolio than Google, but Google is holding all the cards and has a large sway over the direction of search engine advancements.
