Carol Bartz is a bold woman.  The CEO of Yahoo recently was quoted as saying that, “Google is going to have a problem because Google is only known for search.  It is ony half our business; it’s 99.9% of their business.  They’ve got to find other things to do.”  Bartz makes an interesting point that Google should focus on diversification but at the same time it kind of sounds like the “mom and pop shop” calling out the industry giant.  Especially considering Google has a market cap around $169 billion compared to Yahoo’s $24 billion.  But it brings to light some interesting questions regarding how Google stacks up against the other search engines and where they plan on going from here. 
Google’s umbrella of online products may not be as broad as Yahoo’s but it is hardly “just a search engine”.  Since it’s launch in early 2007 Google’s Gmail has been steadily gaining steam in the email market and the acquisition of YouTube in 2006 has also expanded Google’s reach.  Google was ground-breaking with their Google Earth application and continue to be an excellent provider of accurate maps and driving directions.  And they’ve even taken a stab at Facebook and Twitter with one of their most recent developments, the social networking site Google Buzz.
Took a quick look at the services I use and realized that I personally show no real correlation.  My homepage is Yahoo but my primary search engine is Google.  My main email is Yahoo and I utilize My Yahoo but I also frequent the Google Local Business Center and prefer Google AdWords to Yahoo Search Marketing.  I have both Facebook and Twitter accounts but have logged into Facebook ten times in the past week compared to once for Twitter.
I applaud Carol Bartz for standing up to the Goliath of the search engines but I don’t think Google is going to scrap their business model anytime soon.  In March, Google recorded 14.3 billion searches compared to Yahoo’s 2.7 billion and Microsoft’s 1.9 billion.  If it isn’t broke…
Marc Patterson - Search Marketing Consultant