Future of internet is on mobile

The dotcom bust happened quite a few years ago, but Yahoo! has maintained its position as the leading website . However, over the last couple of years, it seems to be gradually losing the mind share race to Google, the most recent setback being Google's acquisition of video site YouTube.

Though the number of people surfing the Net in India is small, Yahoo! chief operating officer Daniel Rosensweig believes that in five years' time, India will be among the top three nations in Internet surfing. On his first ever trip to India, Rosensweig met not just the Yahoo! India team, but also advertisers, partners and industry associates. He spoke to BW's Anup Jayaram on the challenges that the company is facing. Excerpts:

Where do you see the future action on the Internet happening?

It will not be restricted to the personal computer (PC). It will be on the mobile phone. Already there are over 2 billion mobile phone users across the world compared to 1 billion PCs. The next level will be to have Internet access on cell phones, iPods and television. We already have a feature called Yahoo! Go that gives users access to all his information wherever they are - be it on their cell phone, television or PCs.

What is the most exciting thing happening at Yahoo! right now?

Right now, it is Yahoo! Answers. This will be really big in times to come. Already, there are 50 million users of Yahoo! Answers and 75 million questions have been answered till now. That's huge. It has been successful because it offers answers to issues for which a Web search will not get you the right results. That is where Yahoo! Answers comes in handy. You have individuals answering your questions. And yes, we have great means to weed out spam.

Considering that most information is available online on Wikipedia, how is Yahoo! Answers different?

For one, we are richer. Second, you can get answers to a specific question rather than a general search across the Web. Yahoo! Answers covers algorithmic, human and reference search. Others do not offer that kind of depth.

How does Yahoo! plan to counter the Google threat?

What threat? Well, for starters, we focus on the consumer and not just on search and mail. Who is bigger than who depends on which market you are looking at. In the US, both Google and Yahoo! are very close followed by MSN and AOL. In Japan, Taiwan and Singapore, we are the biggest. We are No. 2 in a huge market like South Korea, where Google is No. 5. Also, we are the biggest site on the Internet. Most importantly, Yahoo! is growing faster than the Internet.

How have things changed at Yahoo! India since you started operations here?

This is my first trip to India. But the rest of the team comes here very frequently. We started off as a small development team in Bangalore with 50 people. Today, we have 800. That should go up to 1,000 by the year-end. Yahoo! India will then account for 10 per cent of Yahoo!'s global employee base. We are building a premier team out of India.We will be doing a lot of our innovative work and new products out of India. Bangalore is a major destination for us. It is our second largest engineering centre.

How do you see the growth of the Internet in India?

The real growth in the Internet space today is happening outside the US. A lot of that growth will be in India. China is already the No. 2 with 10 per cent of its population online. Over the next five years, the rising number of Internet users in India should take it to among the top 3-4 nations. As of now, we have just about scratched the surface here. But for that to happen quickly, there are issues that need to be addressed. These include improving the infrastructure, lowering broadband prices and increased mobile Internet access.