The chief executive of Yahoo has said Google needs to diversify its business, or risk coming up against “a problem”.
In an interview with BBC News, Carol Bartz said the US search giant will have to “do a lot more than search” in the future.
According to data analysis firm comScore, figures for March 2010 revealed that Google holds a 65.1 per cent share of the US search market, while Yahoo has 16.9 per cent share.
Bartz said: “Google is going to have a problem because Google is only known for search. It is only half our business but it’s 99.9 per cent of their business. They’ve got to find other things to do. Google has to grow a company the size of Yahoo every year to be interesting.”
During the interview, Bartz told the BBC that one of her ambitions for Yahoo is to strengthen the company’s mobile offering, although she stated that there were no plans to develop a mobile operating system like Google’s Android.
Yahoo announced this week it had struck a deal with Samsung, which will give users easier access to Yahoo services through the mobile manufacturer’s handsets.
Bratz has said that location-based services are a strong growth area and hyperlocal information is something Yahoo will be focusing on. She said the company is actively looking at the possibility of making acquisitions over the coming year, but would not comment on rumours of a deal between Yahoo and location-based social networking site Foursquare.