30 April 2010 | Author: D. Warburton Search Copywriter

Yahoo! boss says Google needs to diversify

Yahoo! boss Carol Bartz has criticised Google's lack of diversity, stating that the company is focusing its efforts too squarely on search.

Despite Google's clear dominance in the search market and its portfolio of other services - including Gmail and its Nexus One smartphone line, to mention just two - Bartz said Google needs to "do a lot more than search" if it hopes to stay on top.

"Google is going to have a problem because Google is only known for search," the Yahoo! CEO told BBC News, and directly contrasted Google's search engine dominated business with Yahoo!'s expansive portfolio of services.

"It is only half our business; it's 99.9% of their business. They've got to find other things to do," Bartz continued.

"Google has to grow a company the size of Yahoo! every year to be interesting."

Nielsen statistics reveal that Yahoo! has a global audience of over 200 million users across more than 70 websites and services, available in 20 languages. This impressive growth has seen Yahoo! become one of the largest websites in the world, but some commentators have criticised its 'sprawling' expansion for being too wide-reaching, and claim the company is not making sufficient use of its numerous acquisitions. Techcrunch has even dubbed Yahoo! the place where "startups go to die."

Bartz is hopeful about Yahoo!'s continuing expansion however, and believes the company could even rival Facebook, as the social networking leader seeks to dominate even more of the social sphere.

"They certainly are taking people's attention and time," Bartz said of Facebook, which currently boasts more than 400 million users worldwide.

"But what is kind of wrong about the conversation is that social just means Facebook.

"Social is interaction. Social is commenting on news stories. It's blogging. It's sharing photos.

"So there are social capabilities running throughout all of our sites, including Twitter feeds and Facebook feeds."

As part of this social expansion, Yahoo! is widely rumoured to be looking to purchase Foursquare, the location-based service that recently celebrated reaching one million users, however Bartz would not confirm this.

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