The battle between perennial competitors Yahoo! and Google continues to reach new fever-pitched heights. Yahoo!, named at the top of the top-100 fastest-growing companies by Fortune magazine last year, has since fluttered with lackluster market perception and share price. Last month's admission that Yahoo!'s new search engine platform, codenamed Project Panama, would be delayed by three months or more, erased 22% of YHOO's value in a single day. Ouch, and then some.

Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel has been beset from questions by those on The Street who have begun to lose faith in the Internet behemoth. This week he gave a verbal clue that I think is extremely important, although not in a measurable and objective way -- yet. Semel said this: "As a result, in the past four quarters Yahoo was the only major Internet company that experienced people spending significantly more time on its site doing more things."

That's right -- although Semel did not say that more customers were using more Yahoo! services and products, the customers that were on the Yahoo! network were spending more time there taking advantage of Yahoo!'s services.