Yahoo is still very much
committed to search, the company said in response to a media report claiming
that the company had conceded the search battle to
Google.
Two company executives emphasised in a
posting
on the Yahoo Search
Blog that they considered the battle far from over. "We are still in the
early days of search. We're in it for the long haul, and we're in it to win,"
they wrote.
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The posting was signed by Qi Lu, vice president for search engineering at
Yahoo, and Eckart Walther, vice president for search products.
Yahoo was forced to respond after the
Bloomberg press
agency published a
news
story that quoted Yahoo chief financial officer Susan Decker as saying: "We
don't think it's reasonable to assume we're going to gain a lot of share from
Google.
"It's not our goal to be the number one in internet search. We would be very
happy to maintain our market share."
The article was quickly picked up by bloggers under headlines suggesting that
Yahoo has stopped trying to compete with Google.
The executives insisted that this was "speculation and confusion" and pointed
out that it is directly contradicted by recent Yahoo actions.
The internet portal launched its own search engine in February 2004, swapping
out search technology provided by Google, and keeps investing in the technology.
Lu and Walther also talked up Yahoo projects and acquisitions including
Flickr,
del.icio.us and
My Web as proof
that the company is continuing to innovate and help users access information
through other ways than web searches.
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