Marissa Mayer has done one thing very very well. She's changing Yahoo's image. I see Yahoo consistently in the news, and am actually interested in what it's doing. It feels interesting. Beforehand I mostly thought of them as an outdated company that was popular in the 90's.
"I see Yahoo consistently in the news, and am actually interested in what it's doing. It feels interesting. Beforehand I mostly thought of them as an outdated company that was popular in the 90's."
I don't understand this. The strategy she's using now is the same one that Yahoo was using in the 90s: Buy a company for a huge amount of money and then watch Yahoo's stock skyrocket so that every acquisition becomes free. Except for that the stock no longer skyrockets every time they buy something.
So as far as I can tell, they're using the exact same strategy as they used in the 90s, except for that the economic reasons for doing so have evaporated. This strategy might still make sense for other reasons (e.g. based on the intrinsic values of the acquisitions), but it hardly strikes me as being rebranding away from their 90s image.
At this point I don't think they are trying to compete with google or anyone in particular. I think right now they are just trying to be relevant and not be just a lost cause.
I think I am one of the few who actually wants Yahoo to be a success. But the reality is that they are far behind from years of just sitting on their ass that it will take a herculean effort to turn itself around. I actually think they are on the right track in doing this.
Here is my take as an arm-chair analyst:
Yahoo has a shortage of superstar developers to turn themselves around. This is hard problem because there are too many big companies with lots of money and very interesting place and projects to work at who are also after these so-called superstar developers. So in that regard Yahoo is the least interesting place to work at. What can Yahoo do?
- They can offer high wage, but its not always about the money. So it is unlikely that they will get many good developers like that.
- They can make yahoo relevant and interesting place to work again but acquiring new projects, developing new projects and improving existing projects. I believe Yahoo is doing that right now. It takes time for public perception to change, but I think they are doing a good job.
- Acui-hires is the easiest way to get good developers under yahoo roof and thats exactly what they are doing.
So I don't think they are competing with google, but instead they are trying to get their base in order and clean up their existing products. Once they are moderately relevant and people starts caring about their product and then maybe they will start looking at challenging the big players like Google.
FWIW, my experience (knowing a bunch of ex-Yahoos who are now at Google) is that Yahoo doesn't actually have a shortage of superstar developers, and in fact has quite a bit of very solid engineering talent locked up there. They have a shortage of qualified managers, and so many of those developers are working on projects that will never launch or are largely inconsequential or are beset by political problems. In that light acquihires are an attempt to bring in whole teams with a track record of shipping, to change the culture to one where launching is expected and not an anomaly requiring superhuman effort.
> At this point I don't think they are trying to compete with google or anyone in particular. I think right now they are just trying to be relevant and not be just a lost cause.
I think Yahoo has a lost generation[1] problem on its hands. Gmail in particular has made Yahoo's products look like Detroit's cars in the 70s and 80s.
Anecdotally, at some point in the 2000s, it became embarrassing to have a Yahoo email address. It invited in jokes of 'she must love spam!' or 'he must love getting his account hacked.' From here, it's a long and difficult road to recovery. From the 1991 article linked below, this quote sounds like it applies:
> "A lot of people would have trouble admitting to their peers that they bought an Oldsmobile even if they thought it was every bit as good as a Honda," said Chris Cedergren of J. D. Power & Associates, an automotive marketing company in Agoura Hills, Calif.
No, I can't say that I have. I just looked up Yahoo's Mail app on Google Play[1]. Unfortunately, the very first thing I see in the description adds to my perception of its quality and doesn't make me want to try the service:
> NOTE: We are aware some of you are having issues while attempting to view an email. To resolve this issue open settings > About Yahoo! Mail > Clear Cache. You should then be able to see your email messages post clearing your local cache. Sorry for the inconvenience.
The app does look to have mostly positive reviews, and that you're asking if I've tried it must mean they're taking a step in the right direction. I wonder if they've considered making it an IMAP client. Given that the built-in Android mail app leaves so much to be desired, I'd gladly try it for my work account, which may then slowly change my perception of Yahoo.
- does Yahoo have free IMAP or POP? No
- does Yahoo have a decent SPAM filter? No
- how much free space for storage? Too little
- can I use my own domain with yahoo mail? Don't know
- does Yahoo have a decent interface? no
It is just totally outdated. I don't know if google makes money with gmail Honestly, I doubt it. But it helps them to keep (and track) its users. From the privacy perspective, gmail is a nightmare. But is is just too good thought out. It just works.
I have to take issue with the jokes about Yahoo! spam filter. I've had the same email address for 10+ years, @yahoo.com, no effort at all to hide it. I get maybe 1-2 spam messages that reach my inbox per week. Usually 1-off nigerian prince emails or "You won 1M GBP UK Lotto" junk has been the most recent ones.
Generally I sit with ~600-700 mail in "spam" which appears to cover ~2 weeks of not-checking-spam-folder.
"Hmm... then how does the iPhone client fetch mail from Yahoo?"
Dunno. Maybe via an app or something? As far as I know, I have to pay for POP accesss. Otherwise I could access my yahoo mail from my gmail account and via alpine.
> I don't know if google makes money with gmail Honestly, I doubt it.
As Google is a pretty key component of paid Google Apps, and the free version is an advertising venue, I think Google makes plenty of money with Gmail, both by selling it and selling advertising in it.
It's interesting how much closer to Yahoo's internet keiretsu model Google is looking these days.
Google used to be, very clearly a search box. Then they were a search box with an ad platform and an email client (that had a good search box). Then search with lots of cool, free web apps.
Now you definitely couldn't define Google as a search box. You'd need to say something lie technology company or somesuch. The revenue still mostly comes from the search box, but the buzz is mostly around (very interesting) other stuff.
I'm not sure why variations on this comment are posted so often. What is profound about it, if most people understand how Google makes most of its money, and it provides little insight on understanding the company's decisions?
A more useful model would come from acknowledging that ad revenues do not make it different from other companies, and like most companies its purpose is to maximize its value to its owners. How do they do this? Given a set of {•stuff} what will maximize revenues right now, and increase profits in the future over some time horizon (by reducing costs and by increasing 'stuff' like new product lines or users).
Perhaps I am responding more to other comments that are similar, more than yours in particular, but statements about there being nothing further to understand once you realize Google is ad supported seem to support a couple oversimplifications. One, the primary focus is on monetizing users, while creating services that provide value to users is simple. Two, selling advertising is simple, too.
Let's say that roles could be categorized into revenue strategies and product development, or even that the hours each person works could be categorized this way. How much of the total compensation to employees is paid to each of these categories? And yet, eventually there are no products if they sell no advertising, but there is no way to sell advertising if users don't find value in the services either. Advertising decisions too involve a more complex system of interactions. Even though clients purchase ads based on their perceived value, Google must assume that eventually perceptions will catch up to the actual value of ad impressions if they target the wrong people, or if there is a decline in how clicks translate into sales. Furthermore, though they might make more money this quarter if they placed more ads per page, or made them stand out more, it could cause a decline in users for the future.
I suppose this is a long way of saying that it makes little sense to me why people focus on an intermediate part of the business model as though it is fundamentally different from any other business. Somewhere between creating products and services in order to increase the company's value to its owners there is a step involving advertising. However, there is also a step involving the purchases of electricity. Couldn't people also talk about how Google purchases megawatts of electricity so that it can purchase more megawatts of electricity? The same might be said about terabits of bandwidth capacity or of computing power. Yet, just like advertising, none of those intermediates tell the whole story about how Google creates something of value for its customers and users in order to increase the value of the company. When people talk about other parts of Google than the advertising platform, the larger context is the system of creation and business growth. The larger context is not some aspect of how they monetize.
I may not have been very clear about the point I was trying to make. Search (and other services) do make up their core business, and people confuse the issue when they exclusively focus on advertising because it is the source of most of their revenues.
One could choose to talk about Mozilla as a front end to Google, or newspapers and broadcast television channels as sellers of advertising. However, focusing on this intermediate step to the exclusion of the complete system obscures rather than clarifies an understanding of how these businesses operate.
It is not merely a question of semantics. Fixating on advertising alone doesn't shed much light on how Google optimizes its business decisions and creates value for its owners. A parallel might be to focus only on the income statement, cash flow statement, or balance sheet of a company rather than looking at all three. Narrow perspectives, even when masquerading as pithiness or cynicism, are poor aids to understanding.
The difference between how Google acquires companies and Yahoo has under Mayer is that Google focuses on Acquihires, bringing each of their hired companies teams on board and integrating them into the culture, etc.
Yahoo seems to be going willy nilly with their acquisitions, even admitting that some of the companies they acquired cough Summly cough were not acquihires but rather for other reasons.
This seems like a waste of money and time to me, and the only people to win are the founders of the acquired companies.
To be fair, I'm willing to see this question posed as "Can Marisa's Yahoo!" as opposed to "Can pre-Marisa's Yahoo!", and I see them potentially being two different things. In some ways, like Apple before Jobs can back, and Apple after Jobs came back.
Where does all the bizarre over-the-top Marisa-love on HN come from? Yahoo couldn't actually be wasting money on paying for this PR could it?
I'm beginning to think that there is some bizarre Natalie Portman nerd obsession phenomenon going on with Marisa. There certainly hasn't been an ounce of business evidence that she has any more gifts than the average CEO.
1. Since Mayer was hired, Yahoo stock is up approximately 64%. This is the measurement by which all CEOs are eventually and finally judged. Whether that trend will sustain itself for the long term has yet to be seen, but nobody can see the future. We can only examine what data we have today. And we do have this correlation (acknowledging that correlation != causation).
2. There is a buzz about Yahoo. That hasn't happened with Yahoo's prior CEOs for a long time. For a consumer company, if you have no buzz, guaranteed that consumers won't be interested. Especially for online consumer companies, where customer loyalty seems to switch so easily and quickly.
3. There have been a number of product revamps that have been well received. The biggest one obviously is Flickr. Another one was Yahoo. When was the last time we saw a well-received Yahoo product revamp before Mayer?
Yeah, Mayer's time there has been short. But in less than a year, she's accomplished more than Yahoo has accomplished in several years.
Everybody loves a good underdog story, and Marissa has the background and qualifications to be a potentially great underdog story.
The evidence is how much Yahoo is in the news lately. Before her strategic moves, everybody had written Yahoo off. Now, everybody is genuinely interested in Yahoo. Their products are actually starting to feel cool again. That is seriously impressive work in such a short time period, and she's just getting started.
Because she came from Google and, by all appearances, is trying to turn Yahoo into Google's worst nightmare. That's incredibly intriguing to the audience.
Maybe not "random" or "overvalued", but it did buy (and then further develop):
* YouTube
* Google Earth
* Google Docs
* Picasa
* Android
* Doubleclick
While none of these is the very heart of Google (Search, AdWords), they encompass some of the most popular and most strategically important of Google's offerings, don't you think?
Applied Semantics had nothing to do with the creation of AdWords. AdWords was created in-house by Google years before they acquired Applied Semantics. It was an extremely successful and lucrative operation long before Applied Semantics ever entered the picture.
Google also developed and launched AdSense prior to acquiring Applied Semantics.
They acquired Applied Semantics because it was complementary to what Google had already developed.
I absolutely agree with you. What Google didn't do is acquire Geocities and del.icio.us, only to disappoint the core users. That was Yahoo.
And then comes the recent string of Summly, GoPollgo, Loki, and Tumblr. From my lay perspective, they seem random, and quite overvalued. Maybe Yahoo will do good things with these companies, as Google did with its acquisitions. Or maybe these will go the way of Geocities.
Shouldn't question be how does google manage to stay ahead in the curve ( despite being a big company ) ? Are their acquisitions ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio... ) helping, and how much they play the part in being one of the dominant company ?
The remarkable thing to me is that after they buy and prove the value of these things, they effectively rewrite them entirely. That takes balls, and massive resources.
This means they weren't buying the product or technology. They were buying the eyeballs, the audiences. Then they invested what was necessary to sustain growth and keep the eyeballs.
Very simply, they cannot. You need to know how to run a business and how to adapt to changes, if you want to be as successful as Google. In my opinion Yahoo! needs to learn that first.
The fact that someone would even pose this question proves what a sham the software industry has become.
If your method of growth is acq-hiring, your company ends up like that tower of random debris (that looks like a dick) that Kefka lives in at the end of Final Fantasy 6.
