Yahoo! CEO: We are new-media trail blazers

Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel has said his company is blazing a trail as a new kind of new-media company.

Speaking at the Web 2.0 Conference on Thursday, Semel also shared his thoughts on his company's struggle with Google and the ethics of doing business in a communist country.

At the event, which was sponsored by Google, MSN Search, Yahoo! and others, Semel - who was named a silicon.com Agenda Setter for 2005 - said Yahoo! is breaking new ground, rooted in technology and committed to distributing traditional media and new types of user-generated content that invite interactivity.

He said: "In the 20th century, media was about content and distribution... [Now] to be a media company, technology is at the core."

"I see us as a 21st century technology company that drives great media," he said. Yahoo! wants to "help design the future of what content may be on the internet".

As an early internet portal, Yahoo! began licensing and aggregating content from media partners, including news agencies and wire services. Yahoo! News and Yahoo! Finance became two of the more popular websites for breaking news and financial information.

This year, Yahoo! has pushed hard to get involved in community-based content, created by and shared among individuals. Yahoo! launched its 360 blogging service and acquired the Flickr photo-sharing service. This week, Yahoo! said it acquired social-events calendar site Upcoming.org.

Recently, Yahoo! has also made deals with columnists and a prominent journalist to write articles for posting on Yahoo!.

There will be some areas where Yahoo! competes with its traditional content partners, Semel said. For example, he said, Yahoo! users may prefer to get travel information such as user recommendations on holiday locales from people within their online social network, rather than from a travel website like Expedia.

Yahoo!'s strategy to compete with Google, Semel said, is to keep the heat up on search technology and to continue to bolster the breadth of services and content it offers its 400 million users.

Noting that Google has a number of services in beta, such as Gmail, with fewer customers than competing Yahoo! services, Semel said Google is "starting to look like a portal" and "as a portal, they would probably be rated number four... We have a much more diversified model".

Asked to comment on the criticism Yahoo! received for providing information that helped the Chinese government convict a journalist accused of leaking state secrets, Semel said companies doing business in China and other foreign countries are subject to the laws of that land.

He said: "It's both a moral issue and a legal issue... Sometimes, on a personal level, I wince... [However] everyone [living in China] knows the law, and everyone operating [businesses] in those countries knows the law."

Elinor Mills writes for CNET News.com