Yahoo!, the internet portal and world's most visited website, is looking to expand in Europe after a series of high profile deals by its rivals.

The Californian group is feeling the pressure to expand outside its home market after Lycos, a rival internet search engine, was bought by Terra Networks of Spain.

Fresh from entering takeover talks with Myplay, the internet music service, Yahoo! indicated yesterday that it was planning an aggressive series of takeovers in the burgeoning European marketplace.

In an interview with the Reuters news agency, Jerry Yang, founder of Yahoo!, made it clear that his attention had turned to Europe from the US.

"We will see similar consolidation opportunities in Europe as we did in the United States and you will see us being very opportunistic and aggressive," Mr Yang said.

Yahoo! is striving to become known for more than just its search engine and has aspirations to expand into the wider media industry around the world.

One of the best-known search engines on the net, it wants to provide a medium by which consumers can buy products in cyberspace as well as communicating with other users.

Mr Yang aims to make the group's services accessible to customers not just through personal computers but also through mobile phones.

"In Europe PCs will continue to do well and the deregulation of the telecoms industry will drive down internet access fees. But personally I think everyone is going to be talking about the wireless arena, where especially western Europe has a significant lead over the US and other countries around the world," Mr Yang said.
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