How does Yahoo recruit the best brains to "maintain marketshare?"

I’m somewhat surprised that you would consider Yahoo a search tool, since neither Yahoo nor Microsoft do searches in the pure sense the way Google does. This may be the reason why their goal is not to be #1. Remember both Yahoo and Microsoft offer search results based on how much a person or company pays them to have their name appear in the search results i.e. (the more you pay the higher on the list you appear). Google has resisted this method of giving search information. Hence Yahoo appears to be trying to generate revenue from the sites that shown in the search request and doesn’t necessarily feel it needs to be #1 in search, since it really isn’t doing true and complete searches anyway.

Yahoo's My Web 2.0 will make all the naysayers eat their words once it matures.

Bert's comments are not correct. Neither MSN nor Yahoo places search results for payment.

What is true is that Google, Yahoo, and MSN (yes Google) place Sponsored results (advertisements) before their search results in boxes labelled "Sponsored". Search for "flowers" and you'll see this ads on all three search engines -- including Google.

Yahoo does have "paid inclusion" programs but these do not guarantee that the results will appear at any specific position in the search results. They may not even appear on the first page. It just guarantees that the pages will be included in the search engine.

Yahoo and MSN are true search engines. And I dare say that Google knows this.