engine - 5:28 pm on Aug 7, 2009 (gmt 0)

Yahoo's Carol Bartz: "We have never been a search company," [bits.blogs.nytimes.com]

Yahoo, according to Ms. Bartz, simply feeds search results for people who have grown curious while reading one of its news stories or watching a video. It doesn’t generally pop into peoples’ minds as the first place to go look for answers during the course of their day-to-day activities. As such, Ms. Bartz said she could continue to live with the 20 percent or so share of the search market Yahoo has today. “I am a very viable number,” she said. “It is very profitable, and we would be happy all day long.” The biggest thing for Yahoo is increasing the number of pages people consume and slapping as many display ads as possible across those pages. “My fortunes are tied to my pages,” Ms. Bartz said.