Yahoo! Fires Back at Google

Brock said Yahoo!'s goal is to get to the point where "email storage is not an issue for the vast majority of our users."

Premium email users (e.g., those who pay to not have ads dropped into their email) and access customers (those who subscribe to fast Internet access via Yahoo! and digital subscriber line partner SBC (SBC Quote - Cramer on SBC - Stock Picks)) will have unlimited email capacity, Brock said.

Otherwise, the company offered the usual analyst day enthusiasm, case studies and PowerPoint analysis. In his presentation, Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosensweig discussed the variety of advertising that Yahoo! offers -- graphical, audio/video, search and user-targeted -- as well as the integration of various Yahoo! services.

To illustrate that integration, Rosensweig spoke of how Yahoo!'s email service is tied in to Yahoo's HotJobs career site -- enabling job-hunters to email easily without resorting to their work accounts. Rosensweig also demonstrated how Yahoo! Shopping is linked into other content on the site, using the example of Yahoo!'s sports area. "To buy on Yahoo! Shopping, you don't have to go to Yahoo! Shopping," he said.

Chief Marketing Officer Cammie Dunaway talked about the company's media campaign that presents Yahoo! as a "life engine."

Rosensweig's mention of the variety of advertising opportunities on Yahoo!, and Dunaway's description of Yahoo! as "much more than a search engine," can be interpreted as indirect swipes at Google -- the search engine that announced plans last month for its long-awaited initial public offering of stock.

Perhaps trying to blur the distinctions that people have drawn between its opportunities for advertisers and Yahoo!'s, Google is planning to offer graphical content-targeted advertising to augment the textual advertising that is its only offering today, it was reported Thursday.

Yahoo! shares, fresh off a 2-for-1 split, rose 2 cents to close at $27.10. Shares slid 12 cents after hours.

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