Yahoo Inc chief executive Carol Bartz has a message for investors hoping for a quick fix at the slumping Internet company or for an online search partnership with Microsoft Corp — don’t expect either to happen anytime soon.
The no-nonsense executive hired by Yahoo five months ago got her latest points across on Wednesday during an appearance at an investor conference hosted in New York by Bank of America Corp’s Merrill Lynch.
As usual, Bartz was peppered with questions about the on-again, off-again talks that Yahoo has been holding with Microsoft since 2006.
PHOTO: AP
Although she didn’t rule out the possibility of turning over Yahoo’s search operations to Microsoft, Bartz left no doubt she believes her firm will thrive without Microsoft.
“Yahoo actually has a bright, bright future — possibly clearer and simpler — without the Microsoft connection,” Bartz said.
When the topic continued to come up, Bartz finally said, “Forget about the Microsoft stuff, it’s honestly not that relevant.”
The two companies have explored various combinations, including Microsoft’s US$47.5 billion bid last year to buy Yahoo in its entirety, as they try to gain ground on Google Inc in the lucrative Internet search market.
Responding to an investor question, Bartz said it probably makes more sense for Microsoft to sell its Internet operations to Yahoo — a concept that she said has raised with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
But she said such a combination probably would cause antitrust problems, especially in e-mail, where Yahoo and Microsoft run the two largest services.
The comments come as Yahoo continues to lose ground to Google Inc, which has more than 64 percent share of the US search market, and as Microsoft releases a new version of its search engine, dubbed Bing.
Yahoo is the No. 2 search engine, with a 20.4 percent share of the US market in April, versus third-ranked Microsoft’s 8.2 percent share, comScore says.
Bartz said Bing will give Microsoft some “uplift” in the search market but will not fundamentally change the competitive dynamics there.
“They’re not going to get scale through Bing. They’re going to get some temporary interest,” Bartz said. “It’s interesting, but not over-the-top interesting.”
Meanwhile, Google on Wednesday rolled out an experimental new search product called “Google Squared.” It does not provide a list of links to Web pages, like with a traditional Google search, but presents information derived from a query in a spreadsheet-like grid called a “square.”
Users can then build, modify and refine their “square” through further Web searches.
In a blog post on Wednesday, Google said Google Squared could be useful when a user needs to make multiple searches to find the information they want.
“It essentially searches the Web to find the types of facts you might be interested in, extracts them and presents them in a meaningful way,” Google said.
“If your square isn’t perfect at the beginning, it’s easy to work with Google Squared to get a better answer,” Google said, although it cautioned that Google Squared’s technology was “by no means perfect” yet.
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