“We don’t think it’s reasonable to assume we’re going to gain a lot of share from Google,” Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker said in an interview. “It’s not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search. We would be very happy to maintain our market share.”
This has aroused some criticism: “It kind of makes you wonder about how serious they are about search,” said Danny Sullivan, editor of London-based SearchEngineWatch.com, which tracks the search industry. “It really ought to be their goal” to be No. 1, he said. “Whether it’s realistic or not.”
I say we take it at face value – Yahoo is not going to try to win 21% more of the search market from Google (Google has 60% while Yahoo has 19%). The search market might be the most profitable niche, but it’s not the only one. While this is certainly good news for Google stock (nice to have a wide moat), it may not be bad news for Yahoo stock.