• Search Engine Land, Tuesday, June 9, 2009 1 PM

Every time Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz talks about how Yahoo competes with Google and Microsoft, "I feel like she's digging the hole even deeper for Yahoo's prospects in search," says Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan. Why, because instead of communicating a clear search strategy, she's sending mixed messages about what the company is and what it's focused on. As Bartz said at the D Conference last month, "We're the place where people find relevant contextual information about things they care about." To which Sullivan replies: "Relevant contextual? Huh? Buzzword buzzword. Things I care about? Like is my email relevant, contextual information? Or is that my IM? And where's search in all this, Yahoo's second largest revenue source last quarter?"

During her conversation at the D Conference, Bartz went on to compare Yahoo to Google. "We are a place people come to be informed," she said. "Google is a place people go to do search. . . .We want to be more personal than Google." Hmm, no mention of the word "search," Sullivan points out. "If search is an important product for Yahoo -- if Bartz wants to maintain the 20 percent share she has and grow it -- then you damn well get the word 'search' out there about yourself in any comparison to Google," he says. "And you especially do that when you keep losing top search talent to Google, Yahoo or elsewhere."

Sullivan adds that Bartz is doing the same thing that Yahoo CEOs in the past have done; that is, backing away from Yahoo as a search engine. Instead of positioning itself as a "life engine", as it did in 2004, Yahoo really needs to be "search and more" company, if it wants to be taken seriously in search, he says.

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