all talk and no action

This seems like a strange thing for Yahoo! to say: "It's not our goal to be No. 1 in internet search. We would be very happy to maintain our market share," Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker said in an interview at seattlepi.com.

As Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com says in the same article: "It kind of makes you wonder about how serious they are about search. It really ought to be their goal" [to be No. 1]. "Whether it's realistic or not."

EDIT: Qi Lu and Eckart Walther at Yahoo! have written a response on the Yahoo! Search Blog, saying that Yahoo!'s "commitment to being the best should be crystal clear from our investments in talented people, research, innovation and new products. Believe it or not, we are still in the early days of search. As all of us at Yahoo! agree, we're in it for the long haul, and we're in it to win."

Inevitably various bloggers are spitting blood of the "if they don't want to be number one, then I ain't gonna use 'em" variety. You're right, it's a weird thing to say, but I suspect it's perhaps being taken out of context: maintaining market share but making more cash out of it might be a better goal than market share uber alles.

Or I may be talking out of my arse.

Danny Sullivan suggests that it may have been about lowering expectations among investors who were expecting to see gains.

You make a good point, though: Decker didn't say "we aim to be a less successful business than Google," which suggests that Yahoo! (or at least Decker) sees increasing amounts of Yahoo!'s revenue coming from areas outside of search.

Your edit made my comment make even less sense :)

Damn, I should have edited the post to make it about something entirely different, like fishing holidays in the Lake District :)