Internet giant Yahoo today offered to be part of India’s plan to provide citizens with unique identity numbers, a project headed by IT czar Nandan Nilekani, but said it was not looking for commercial gains.
Yahoo’s worldwide Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz today met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and expressed interest to partner the government in the project.
“The UID project involves huge database. We at Yahoo have expertise in handling such huge amount of data. We met the PM today morning and discussed, among other things, how Yahoo can help the government in the project,” Bartz said.
However, the US-headquartered IT firm said it was not looking at making commercial gains from the project.
“There is no commercial interest involved in offering Yahoo’s services for the UID project. We have been in India for many years. It is time to pay back the nation,” Yahoo India (R&D) VP and CEO Shovick Mukherjee said.
The project aims to provide a Unique Identification Number to the citizens, numbering over one billion.
Yahoo India has a major presence in India. The company claims that three out of four Indians access the Internet through Yahoo, which offers search engine, email and social networking services, among others. Yahoo processes about 500 billion emails every month, Bartz added.
Earlier, software giant Microsoft had offered to be a part of this ambitious project.
Taking on rival Google, Bartz said while Google gets all its revenues from search, for Yahoo, search is just a part of the business.
“If you compare us to anyone may be the ones who are just a bit closer are MSN and AOL.”
“Our software runs on 1,900 differrent mobile platforms. We have tie-ups with virtually all mobile carriers.”
Yahoo has entered into a search partnership with Microsoft, which had attempted to overtake the company.
Both companies, Yahoo with search engine, and Microsoft with Bing, have lost marketshare to Google, which controls the majority of Internet search.
Asked about Yahoo’s recent television commercial which is being aired, Bartz said post the televised advertisement, time spent on Yahoo sites has gone up by 14 per cent. “We sell advertisements, we feel even we should also advertise,” she added.
