When it comes to competitors, Yahoo’s Carol Bartz may not have the usual suspect(s) – Google and perhaps Microsoft – at the front of her mind.  The CEO recently indicated in an interview that Facebook occupies her thoughts, instead.

Bartz started by admitting to David Lieberman that Yahoo hasn’t achieved a lot of success in the field of social media.  In reference to Facebook, she said, "Did we miss the boat on exactly how they do it?  Of course we did.  Everybody did."

Then, responding to a question about the identity of Yahoo’s single biggest competitor, the CEO suggested, "Facebook – not today, but they could be.  If they keep going, they will have the vault of information on everybody in the world, and that’s valuable."

Which is true, of course, and Bartz may get points for recognizing that fact.  Plus, many people are effectively pitting Google and Facebook against each other, so it makes sense for Yahoo to assume a similar position.

The one slight complication is the fact that Eric Schmidt and Steve Ballmer left Facebook out of the equation last month, agreeing that Bing is Google’s chief competitor.

Anyway, in a financial sense, Yahoo appears to be doing well compared to just about every potential rival today, with its stock up 1.69 percent so far.  Google and Microsoft are up just 0.81 percent and 0.05 percent, respectively, and of course Facebook isn’t supposed to go public for quite a while.