Yahoo!, one of the two names most synonymous with search on the internet, has surprised Silicon Valley by suggesting that the future of the web is not about search.

The comments, interpreted as an admission that Yahoo! cannot keep pace with Google, came during a conference at which many participants said that the traditional model for getting information from the internet – using a browser to visit web pages – was outdated.

Although Yahoo!, like Google, has talked before about developing a more personalised web, with relevant information delivered directly to readers, this was the first time that the company has said publicly that search will become less important.

"Search is no longer the dominant paradigm," Tapan Bhat, vice president of Front Doors, Yahoo!'s personalised home page, told the Next Web conference in Amsterdam.

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"The future of the web is about personalisation. Where search was dominant, now the web is about 'me.' It's about weaving the web together in a way that is smart and personalised for the user," Mr Bhat said.

The remarks were seized upon as an acknowledgement that Yahoo!, which has been losing market share to Google despite the release of its rejuvenated search platform, Panama, earlier this year, could no longer keep pace with its rival and was beginning to shift its focus.

"They're basically admitting defeat,” Deborah Schultz, a Silicon Valley-based marketing consultant who gave one of the conference keynote speeches, said. “They've realised they can't compete with Google on search."

Jeff Clavier, a managing partner at the venture capital firm SoftTech, said: "The problem with Yahoo! is that they're trying to be all things to all people but they don't do any one thing particularly well."

Asked later to clarify his comments, Mr Bhat told Times Online: "We're not admitting defeat. Search still matters, but we need to be providing a wrapper around search to turn the info search offers up into something more useful."

A Yahoo! spokeswoman added that search remains a top priority for the company.

One of the most widely talked about keynote speeches at the conference was given by NetVibes, a company which has attracted more than ten million users to its service, which allows them to customise the information they receive from the web via small icons knows as 'widgets.'

Instead of visiting their favourite pages on a browser, NetVibes users organise a series of widgets that receive information from those pages, as and when it is updated, via a feed similar to RSS (really simple syndication).

NetVibes said it already had agreements in place with more than 100 major providers, inluding CBS, Time, and USA Today to 'widgetise' their content. Tariq Krim, its chief executive, said it would announce deals with 500 more companies this month.

"The widgets can be anything – your e-mail inbox, the favourite section of your chosen newspaper, a travel site that is constantly searching for cheap ticket on a route you have specified,” Mr Krim said.

“The point is to be able to update you on all essential things without you having to visit pages,” he added. "We like to call it a dashboard of your digital life."

Scott Rafer, the former chief executive, of MyBlogLog, which was bought by Yahoo! earlier this year for a reported $10 million, agreed that the focus of web companies was moving from search to personalisation.

"Google's founders made a lot of money essentially with an algorithm,” he said. “The next trick is people. The next web will be dominated by someone who does a great job with people manipulations.”

Mr Clavier said that web personalisation will become much more sophisticated. "I think the level of personalisation will reach a point of total freakiness,” he said. “Every personal detail – what content someone likes, the context they're in, their location, the time of day and their behaviour – will start to become relevant in the way the web is used."

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