Google chief executive Eric Schmidt wished rivals Microsoft and Yahoo! luck on Tuesday in competing on Web search but took aim at the software giant for what he called a "history" of trying to "restrict consumer choice".<\/p>\n
"Microsoft is working very hard to build a competitive search engine," the CEO of Internet search king Google told a Morgan Stanley technology conference in San Francisco.<\/p>\n
Asked about the prospects of a Yahoo!-Microsoft tie-up on search, Schmidt said: "I don’t know if that scenario will occur.<\/p>\n
"We did our best attempt at a deal with Yahoo!, and as you know we had to cancel it at the very last minute," he said in a reference to a Google-Yahoo! search advertising partnership that was rejected by US anti-trust regulators.<\/p>\n
"So we wish them the best of luck," Schmidt said.<\/p>\n
"The problem has to do with Microsoft’s ability to use its Windows monopoly to restrict consumer choice," the Google CEO added. "That’s not a new subject, it’s been discussed at great length.<\/p>\n
"So anything that Microsoft would do that would eliminate consumer choice with respect to search engines, Internet browsers, distribution, for which it was previously found guilty, are of concern and there’s a history of that.<\/p>\n
"So that’s what we worry about," Schmidt said. "So long as technologies are competing on a fair to fair basis I think that’s great."<\/p>\n
Schmidt also said the search market was not "settled."<\/p>\n
"There’s obviously a lot of innovation ahead of us," he said. "It looks like people will move very quickly from one search engine to another. A majority of people say they use more than one search engine.<\/p>\n
"Search as it’s defined, as historically it has been defined by Google, is not settled at all," he said.<\/p>\n
Yahoo! chief executive Carol Bartz addressed the same conference and said Internet search data remained "extremely important" to the company.<\/p>\n
She also said any talks with Microsoft would remain private.<\/p>\n
"We’ve been investing in search this last tumultuous year," the new Yahoo! CEO said. "We’ve actually improved the search experience.<\/p>\n
"Search data is extremely important and we would never debone the company of missing what our customers value by (knowing) what they’re looking for."<\/p>\n
Asked whether Yahoo! would enter into talks with Microsoft, Bartz said: "I’m not going to negotiate with my 50,000 favorite friends" – a reference to the software giant’s employees.<\/p>\n
"If we’re going to negotiate it’s as companies negotiate and that is privately," Bartz said. "And if something happens you’ll know it then, and until then there’s no comment on it."<\/p>\n
Bartz, who replaced Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang as CEO in January, also identified products she considered "core" to the Sunnyvale, California, firm.<\/p>\n
"Core is the front door, core is news, finance, core is mail," she said.<\/p>\n
"All the other things, everything’s up for examination," Bartz said, adding that she had created a "wall of shame" of "products we’re not so happy with."<\/p>\n
Bartz didn’t identify such products but let slip she prefers a Google product to a Yahoo! one. "I don’t use Yahoo! maps, I use Google maps," she said.<\/p>\n
Bartz also said Yahoo! was interested in social networks but added: "I do not think we can invent the next Facebook."<\/p>\n
The comments by Schmidt and Bartz came as Microsoft confirmed it is testing a new Internet search engine known as Kumo.com it hopes will make the software giant a player in a market dominated by Google.<\/p>\n
Microsoft tried last year to buy Yahoo! for $47.5 billion in a vain effort to merge online resources to better battle Google, which rules more than 60 percent of the US online search market.<\/p>\n
Yahoo!’s share of the market is about 21 percent and Microsoft trails with 8.5 percent, according to recent figures from industry tracking firms.<\/p>\n