
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge - shawndumas
http://www.wsj.com/articles/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-faces-morale-challenge-1448326486
======
PhilWright
Whenever I see a struggling company like this I ask myself the simple
question. If the company didn't exist, would there be a need to create it? In
the case of Yahoo I think the answer is no. If they disappeared tomorrow there
would be no compelling reason for others to try and fill the gap it left
behind. Hell, I doubt most people would even noticed they had gone.

So they need to build a new business from the dying ashes of the current
revenue. At the moment it does not look like the CEO has any good ideas on how
to do that.

~~~
akg_67
> If the company didn't exist, would there be a need to create it?

Should I guess that you were not adult yet when Yahoo! started?

When Yahoo! was founded, there was a need for WWW site directory, and Yahoo!
filled that vacuum. It was the go to place for finding the sites in your area
of interest.

Some of the sections of Yahoo! for example: Finance and Sports are still go to
places for me and I am sure countless others. I haven't come across any other
sites that even come close to those two sections on Yahoo!. Even today, there
is no single directory site with curated list of relevant sites, news and
information from such sites. So, I will say there is still a need for a Yahoo!
like portal with curated information. What Google spits out in search and
associated sites is SEO crap. Google has inability to differentiate among
14,777 news articles on a topic and which one is the most relevant and
comprehensive.

IMO, Yahoo! need to go back to their roots which was portal of curated
information. If they wait too long and the direction FB is heading, they will
fill the void left by Yahoo!.

~~~
vonklaus
> I haven't come across any other sites that even come close to [sports and
> finance] on Yahoo!

You haven't been able to find any other sites focusing on finance or sports on
the internet? To be clear, yahoo does a decent job curating finance and sports
sections, but it is _extremely trivial_ to find sites similar to Yahoo. Here
are a few, I found:

Finance:

========

Marketwatch[0], is very similar to yahoo finance. Owned by WSJ and Dow Jones.

Google Finance[1] is like Yahoo! finance, only done by google.

MSN Money[2] almost the exact same thing as Yahoo.

Then you have your more niche honorable mentions like motley fool,
seekingalpha, zerohedge, etc.

SPORTS:

=======

Without repeating Google and Microsoft offerings, there is of course:

ESPN which is the second largest sports news provider, also they have a tv
network about sports. They sports fairly hard.[3]

Bleecher Report is not to be out sportsed, sort of a hipster pitchfork media
type sports player.[4]

CBS Sports[5]

NBC SPorts[6] This, and the preceding offering are large entrenched media rent
collectors, which is similar to yahoo, except that they are profitable.

So, in finality, I find that statement absurd, but I am glad you enjoy yahoo.
I am rooting for it as it is an under dog for sure.

[0][http://www.marketwatch.com](http://www.marketwatch.com)

[1][http://www.google.com/finance](http://www.google.com/finance)

[2][http://www.msn.com/en-us/money](http://www.msn.com/en-us/money)

[3][http://espn.go.com](http://espn.go.com)

[4]BleacherReport.com

[5]CBSSports.com

[6][http://www.nbcsports.com](http://www.nbcsports.com)

~~~
akg_67
I was pretty sure someone will make a comment like yours. You didn't
disappoint. You want to me to go to 3 different sites for Finance when I can
get everything at Yahoo! You want me to go to 4 different sites for Sports
when I can get everything at Yahoo! Can you get Bleacher Report articles on
ESPN? I will suggest comparing Yahoo! Finance and Sports with the sites you
mentioned. You might be surprised that most sites you mentioned feed to Yahoo!
and not vice-versa. I can go to all the sites you mentioned or just go to
Yahoo!

Each mentioned site is missing something that is available on Yahoo! Either
you browse through all the articles on Bleacher Report or you can see the most
relevant ones on Yahoo! That is the difference.

Remember the keywords Portal, curated information, relevant information,
comprehensive. None of the sites you mentioned are at a level of Yahoo!

~~~
vonklaus
I meant each site is as good as yahoo! not that you would have to go to each
one, but I don't really care about sports. The finance sites are all drop in
replacements and better than yahoo finance.

As for sports, if you want the same information but the caveat you seem hung
up on is that it must come from different domains, just go to a reddit like
aggregator. I get it, you like yahoo. Yahoo does a good job, and I also like
yahoo. My point is it is patently rediculous to claim there is no other space
on the internet that is close enough to Yahoo sports or finance.

Companies don't survive being ~10% better than the competition, and the stuff
you are talking about sounds like it is moire about habit than anything
tangible.

~~~
xiaoma
> The finance sites are all drop in replacements and better than yahoo
> finance.

I completely disagree with that. I tried for over a year to switch from Yahoo
to Google for finance and found it completely lacking, despite the nicer UI.
The only site that can match Yahoo finance in my opinion is the Motley Fool. I
still use both.

------
chollida1
Sometimes, well it actually happens quite often, a company just runs its
course and is better off just winding things up and closing shop.

IMHO it looks like the likely end game for Yahoo is:

\- taken private by a Private Equity firm

\- divest Yahoo Japan and Alibaba

\- any divisions that aren't making an actual profit, (tumblr, flickr, fantasy
sports, etc, will be shopped around and sold if possible, or shuttered if not
possible.

\- search, email and the yahoo front page will be sold to Microsoft

Yahoo has done everything by the MBA book to turn around the company, they are
at the step of brining in Mckinsley consultants, never a terribly good sign.

Sometimes, time just passes a company by and you can't do much to turn it
around, its not the leadership's fault or the engineers fault. The market just
says the company is no longer needed.

This doesn't mean the company is un profitable. Corel was a company in the
early 2000's that went this route. A company can circle the drain, making
slightly less and less profit each year, slowly laying off people which causes
them to miss their next quarter, which necessitates more layoffs and the
circle continues until someone buys them out.

I think this is the likely fate of Yahoo.

The next step is to engage an investment bank to find them a takeover partner
if Silver Lake doesn't want to be the one to take them private.

What other possible route is there?

They've brought in 4-5 CEO's each with their own vision of what yahoo should
be and all of them has failed to turn the company around.

What is Yahoo's area of expertise that they make money at and can do better
that Google, Microsoft, Facebook or Amazon?

~~~
cft
It depends on who is trying to resurrect it: Marissa Meyer or Steve Jobs.
Imagine a reality show: Jobs or Musk in 2010 were tasked to turn Yahoo around,
and the rules were that they would only have access to Yahoo's internal
resources and cash. I would bet with my money buying Yahoo stock that they
would reverse the curves.

~~~
visakanv
> Jobs or Musk in 2010 were tasked to turn Yahoo around

Assuming either of them was actually given the mandate to do so by the board
of directors, etc, I imagine they'd fire like 50-80% of the staff, get rid of
anything that's not profitable, and produce one highly refined product at a
time, something that hasn't been done well before.

Source: Am both a Jobs and Musk fanboy and have done an unhealthy amount of
reading about their histories and decision-making. I particular like this
video of Jobs at NeXT:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNfRgSlhIW0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNfRgSlhIW0)

~~~
sireat
That was a really good video and I say that as someone who is no fan of Jobs.

Did NEXT manage to execute the plan and sell 50k workstations in 1991?

~~~
tim333
Seems not - from Wikipedia "The NeXT computers experienced relatively limited
sales, with estimates of about 50,000 units shipped in total" "NeXT withdrew
from the hardware business in 1993 "

So I'm guessing more like 20k.

------
mmaunder
You can bypass the paywall with this link:
[http://bit.ly/1XdzZgO](http://bit.ly/1XdzZgO) (Google search the original URL
in quotes in future)

Sounds like she's in a tough spot. You're pretty much forced into a situation
of focusing on the good numbers when you're a public company or you'll get
beaten up by the shareholders and shorts. So it's difficult to shine sunlight
on the bad stuff to disinfect because that's not what public investors want to
hear.

Going into search? That's just crazy talk. Google has the space completely
wrapped up.

I think Yahoo has some excellent properties like finance.yahoo.com which is
amazing and could unlock a deluge of cash with the right biz model. Retail
investors visit the site in droves daily. Right now it's an advertising
disaster. Prime space taken up by spammy link-baity ads injected into the main
center content: "10 most popular fitness models on the planet". And prime
spaces on the right taken up by amazon ads. The most targeted ads by etrade,
scottrade and ameritrade are the smallest ads on the page with tiny icons on
the left. They relaunched yahoo finance in September and sounds like their
users hate the new site: [https://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/315477-finance-
dd-3](https://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/315477-finance-dd-3)

The WSJ article isn't going to make life at Yahoo any easier unfortunately.

~~~
gelatocar
You can also bypass the paywall by clicking the 'web' link under the post
title on HN.

~~~
avn2109
I am not new at all to HN and never knew this, cool :)

~~~
firloop
It was added a couple of months ago.

------
hooande
Yahoo started as a couple of people who said "This internet thing has a lot of
content now, let's try to organize it for people." They should go back to
doing that, and throw 20 years worth of technology and cultural growth at the
problem. Along with as much manpower and machine learning tech as hundreds of
millions of dollars can buy.

I do enjoy the drama of the Mayer Saga, but it doesn't seem like any of
Yahoo's attempts at innovation are working. They shouldn't be competing with
Google in search. They should be _redefining_ search. Some times the best way
to change the game is to go back to basics. Of course if I knew exactly what
that looked like, I would be too busy walking the path to wealth to write hn
comments. But it does seem like Yahoo isn't doing anything innovative right
now. Their most valuable properties, mail and the yahoo home page, are simply
good enough versions of products that have become commodities. They began by
offering a service that no one else was providing, and have ended up being
relegated to being the internet's generic alternative to everything.

It's Hail Mary time. If I were in Mayer's position, I would find a way to burn
a few hundred million dollars of the alibaba money on a moon shot before the
board had time to vote me out. The odds against may be overwhelming, but it's
better than slightly slowing the angular velocity of their circle around the
drain. With the recent tone of press articles about her tenure and what that
does to an executive's reputation, I don't see what she has to lose.

~~~
tayo42
>But it does seem like Yahoo isn't doing anything innovative right now.

Aren't they starting to stream nfl games for free? The first one they did was
from what I heard handled very well. I thought there was talks about more.

~~~
TheCondor
With their brand equity, is it possible for them to innovate?

It isnt hip enough to be cool, it's not big enough to be Facebook or google,
it's a $30billion company that some how has the branding of the internets AOL.
If yahoo "innovates" it will immediately be uncool.

Morale issues definitely can make things more difficult but are things really
that dire there? Best thing I can see they've got going for them is the
analysts are still foolish enough to rate Amazon as a tech company and not as
a Walmart competitor that does some tech; they don't have great ways to
classify these companies. It doesnt seem like yahoo is doing foolish things,
it might be more of a bellwether for the free everything and monetize the
traffic industry.

------
steve19
"Ms. Mayer called a meeting with senior executives in August and asked them to
sign a written agreement to stay with the company for at least three more
years, according to two people familiar with the meeting."

Is such an agreement enforceable? Or is this some meaningless pledge?

If you want people to stay, give them a decent financial incentive.

~~~
smt88
It's not enforceable. In the US, you can't enforce an employment contract if
it involves forcing someone to work for you. This was partially legislated as
a legal defense against indentured servitude.

~~~
rhino369
You can't get "specific performance," where the court physically forces you to
uphold the agreement.

But it is enforceable in that Yahoo could sue for damages. The damages
probably wouldn't be all that high though. It is more of an issue when the
employment is something unique. Like a start athlete or movie star. You can't
just find another person to play Tony Stark in Iron Man 4. But there are
plenty of people who can be a Yahoo executive, relatively speaking.

~~~
sjg007
But Batman gets replaced all the time... The only thing that would give
leverage would be a clawback provision on the retention bonus and/or vesting.

------
datashovel
Don't get me wrong. I love the fact that Yahoo took a chance on Marissa Mayer.
The thing that I can't overlook is none of the stories I have read indicate
this was a matter of a perfect vision that was just poorly executed.

All of the stories I've read lead me to believe there has been a somewhat
muddled vision and less than spectacular execution on top of that.

Then again it was only mid-2012 that she was appointed CEO. Not enough time
IMO, though the stories these days make one wonder if allowing a full 5 years
(I think a reasonable minimum term for CEO of a large corporation like Yahoo)
is going to be more destructive than constructive. Especially when there seem
to be many documented failures, and not much to hang one's hat on, in the form
of successes, to this point.

~~~
phamilton
I'm not sure that "perfect vision that was just poorly executed" is worth
much. If execution is the hard part, then any sort of vision that didn't
include execution is just nonsense.

~~~
datashovel
In terms of assessing a CEO's impact on an organization I think it could play
an important role.

For example if people are trying to knock down the doors to purchase / use
what Yahoo is working on but they're abandoning because of scalability issues
or buggy systems or continuous delays in delivery timelines, this sounds to me
like we're dealing more with execution issues.

On the other hand, if the site / products hum along without glitches, yet are
receiving little to no attention or traction from the outside world, this
could be a sign that the company is on the wrong track in a more fundamental
way. Perhaps more directly linked to the "output" / "work product" of Marissa
Mayer as CEO.

------
philip1209
I feel like Netflix understands how to keep morale high, and that's paying top
of market and firing people who don't deserve that pay. Free lunches, massage
rooms, etc are all marginally important compared to good pay. Perhaps Yahoo
could innovate further by offering private offices.

This isn't the panacea for innovation or a large company, but if the goal is
to raise morale and hire top talent - I know those two things combined would
get some experienced candidates to consider joining Yahoo.

~~~
kylec
Or, you know, allow remote work. There are lots of talented programmers that
don't live in the SF Bay area.

------
rw2
Yahoo's fantasy football was super popular, why was no effort put in to make a
competing product to Draft King?

Tumblr acquisition was not a good one. It was too web oriented and users were
moving more to mobile.

It takes a long time to reverse momentum, and to try a lot of things.

~~~
perryh2
I work on Daily Fantasy at Yahoo and would just like to point out that we do
compete with DK/Fanduel :)
[https://yahoo.com/dailyfantasy/](https://yahoo.com/dailyfantasy/)

~~~
akg_67
Daily fantasy has very annoying pop up on Yahoo! Sports. Also, I guess daily
fantasy product resulted in killing of NCAAF and NFL picks against Yahoo!
Experts and Yahoo! Users. The Picks link goes to message "something went
wrong, we are working on it" page now for several weeks. Instead it Should be
404 and Picks link removed.

~~~
perryh2
don't know why this is broken, but I'll file a bug. thank you! One of these
days, I'm going to run a bot that crawls all pages on yahoo.com and reports
non-200 responses...

~~~
1024core
Why write a bot? Doesn't yapache log such events? Just run a Hadoop job on the
error logs.

~~~
perryh2
I'd run it across the entire site. Sure, we do have logs, but it's not easy to
access them for all *.yahoo.com. Logs from each property are ingested into
different places. The infrastructure is way more complex than it should be
making bare-minimum monitoring like alerts on non-200 responses on all
properties difficult to maintain.

------
1024core
It would be worthwhile to read Paul Graham's essay now, if you haven't already
done so: "what happened to Yahoo"[1]

The thing that jumps out at me is the lack of "hacker" culture at Yahoo. Sure,
they have a few really smart people there; but the culture is missing. As long
as this is the case, Yahoo will continue to wander aimlessly.

Marissa (or the next CEO) would do well to work on putting together a hacker
culture, and get rid of most of the PMs, Directors and VPs. Yahoo is too
management-heavy, and hacker-light.

[1]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html)

------
ksec
From my extremely limited knowledge, and mainly from reading, and reading
between the line on others people's view.

I think Marrissa will be a great COO, but she lacks the vision.

Even people who used to work with her ( Eric Schmidt) had said she is the most
quantitative CEO in silicon valley, if not the world. And from many other
pieces of information she likes to measure everything, from colour, design or
human aspect.

But that is the problem. You cant measure something now and tell you what
happens in the future. If you could do that you would be rich in no time. You
want to steer the ship to the right direction.

She believe she can Buy into talents with the so called talent acquisition.
But if the company are doing some work they love, they will leave. It really
is that simple. Talents have no problem finding different Jobs, so you need to
do something rather then paying them higher.

Sense of priority, what needs to be done first, it seems to me they are lack
of focus. Google too, but google dont have the financial problem yahoo has.

The lack of taste. There, quote from Steve Jobs. I dont know how to say it
better.

Sometimes I wish i could get to say a few words direct to Marissa. From a user
perspective.

~~~
trhway
>I think Marrissa will be a great COO, but she lacks the vision.

Remember Fiorina? The same situation of a midlevel absolutely mediocre exec
getting lucky at catching a huge wave bringing her straight to the top. Just a
female, ie. charming, version of a "Yes"-man.

------
onewaystreet
The morale problem is a symptom of bad leadership. It's not going to be fixed
with more bad leadership.

~~~
Bud
Steve Jobs could come back from the dead and he would be utterly helpless to
revive the abject piece of crap that is Yahoo.

~~~
HillaryBriss
Warren Buffett once wrote: _With few exceptions, when a manager with a
reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor
fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains
intact._

It's not clear to me that Yahoo's business has poor fundamental economics
because I don't quite know what business it's in.

~~~
rodgerd
> It's not clear to me that Yahoo's business has poor fundamental economics
> because I don't quite know what business it's in.

Buying, say, tumblr didn't help with that because it's not like a free
blogging engine would appear to be a great money spinner. Suggesting you want
to make it less R18 then suggests you didn't look too hard at what people use
it for.

Similarly, when flickr has a lot of people who are prepared to pay to host
photos spattering ads all over it seems like... a lack of understanding of how
it works.

flickr makes me particularly sad. The user authentication fuck up was
appalling. The ads were moronic. It only needs a couple of minor tweaks, some
of which (like albums for groups) to make itself a Facebook alternative on the
side.

------
colmvp
I would recommend anyone interested in this story to also read the Forbes
article about Mayer's problems and potential exit at Yahoo
([http://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2015/11/19/the-
last-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2015/11/19/the-last-days-of-
marissa-mayer/)).

On top of stories about large number of executives have left over the course
of 2015 ([http://recode.net/2015/10/19/yahoo-talent-exodus-
accelerates...](http://recode.net/2015/10/19/yahoo-talent-exodus-accelerates-
as-marissa-mayers-turnaround-flounders/)), the lack of vision/planning that
contributed to executive discontent:

> But perhaps none of these incidents damaged morale more than Mayer’s
> reorganization of Yahoo’s product teams. When Mayer launched the effort last
> fall, everyone agreed the existing structure had outlived its usefulness—for
> instance, mobile products was partitioned from other groups. But Mayer
> embarked on the process without laying out a grand vision for it. Instead,
> she began sketching out different scenarios in one-on-one meetings with
> various executives, floating one plan by one exec and a different by
> another. Unable to make up her mind, the process dragged on for months. “She
> went through 20 different permutations,” says an executive with knowledge of
> the process. “The product guys were twisting in the wind, not knowing what
> they were going to run.”

> Product releases slowed to a trickle, and a turf war brewed as executives
> became concerned with their futures. Jon McCormack, a star executive who had
> joined Yahoo in January from Amazon and was promised a broad engineering
> portfolio covering critical areas like mobile, landed in the vacuum created
> by Mayer’s indecision. He was gone by the end of February and now works for
> Google. When Mayer announced the new structure in April, it was too late.
> “That was the beginning of everyone losing faith,” says another senior
> executive. “That’s when people started to look for other jobs.”

I don't consider being the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company that's still
trying to figure out where it fits in the 21st century a job anyone could
possibly do, but it seems like Mayer's strategy has been a little all over the
place with no real gain in any segment. From the WSJ article:

> As her strategy has shifted, Ms. Mayer has variously cast Yahoo as a
> challenger to Netflix Inc. in online video content and as a threat to Google
> Inc. in Web search, but has made little progress toward either goal.

I'm just not sure where she's trying to push Yahoo towards. What is their
vision?

------
danharaj
I see a lot of parallels between Marissa Mayer's tenure at Yahoo and Dick
Costolo's tenure at Twitter. Dick left two quarters ago and Twitter is still
struggling to meet investor expectations.

I have a feeling that there are structural problems at Yahoo, like Twitter,
that even a unicorn CEO would have difficulty fixing. A lot of analysts and
investors seem very leadership oriented in their blame anyway.

~~~
SwellJoe
There's a strong cult of personality around our industry, in general. The
belief that a special CEO can make a billion dollar company. It ignores the
role of luck, the other employees (sometimes there are thousands of employees,
as in the case of Yahoo!, and every single one of them can make or break the
company in small ways every day), changes in the market, etc.

Steve Jobs is the epitome of the Magic CEO archetype, in this school of
thought, and yet, he founded expensive failures, too, and almost rode Apple
into the ground, to boot.

There are so many variables that it seems harmful to the industry and the
world as a whole to place so much value _and_ so much blame on CEOs when
things go right or wrong.

All that said, I'd like to see an experiment where a CEO steps in, cuts
C-level salaries dramatically (taking the hit from people leaving who care
more about the million dollar bonus than the company itself), including their
own, and re-directing that money to higher wages for employees and deeper,
further ranging, research and development. Kinda replicate the history of HP,
in reverse: Start with high executive salaries, awful outdated products, and
defeated company morale, and start building a culture that looks toward the
future, takes care of everyone in the company (before C-levels get bonuses)
and treats them all with respect from top to bottom, and build products that
define the market not follow it.

But, I've never built or run a billion dollar company. I might be an idiot
that no one should ever listen to.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I wouldn't call NeXT an expensive failure, especially seeing how it laid the
framework for Apple's current success. It is hard to say what would have
happened if Steve Jobs stayed at Apple in the 80s....he was never actually CEO
before 1997 (see [http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/08/25/a-look-at-apples-
ceos...](http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/08/25/a-look-at-apples-ceos-
from-1977-to-2011/)).

~~~
aaronbrethorst
NeXT effectively replaced Apple's leadership post-1996. Arguably NeXT affected
the single most successful 'reverse takeover' of all time.

~~~
SwellJoe
Still too complicated of a story and too much tied up with time and place and
team for it to be "Steve Jobs did this". And, there were many points during
his story where he was catching more flack than Marissa Mayer has ever had
directed her way, and probably ever will get. Kinda reinforces my point that
CEOs get too much credit and too much blame.

But, you're right, I guess. Steve Jobs' life is a long story arc that ends in
massive success, with many smaller successes and failures along the path. In
all cases, the credit and blame should (in a just world) be distributed a bit
more widely than it is. Apple without Wozniak (or any of the several dozen
other superstar engineers that Apple attracted in the early years) would not
have become Apple.

------
nugget
You need to own and exploit a monopoly in order to grow into a true tech
heavyweight. Facebook has social (and all the traffic and user data that comes
with it), Microsoft has the OS and utilities, Apple has the OS, hardware, and
apps, and Google has search and (tbd) Android apps. Unless you monopolize
something of extreme value (user data or a platform), you should focus on just
making money, although unfortunately Wall Street doesn't value this very
highly (see IAC). Yahoo has a bunch of great second and third place properties
(search, news, weather, email) but no monopolies, and for this reason even the
transition to mobile under MM was unlikely to move the needle for them. If
they slimmed down and brought in the right kind of management the core
properties could be extremely profitable.

~~~
bad_user
I think you're missing the forest from the trees. Monopolies in software are
created through excellence.

If Facebook "has social" that's because they were and still are the best
social network. Of course, now that they are big, they've got a huge lock-in
effect, but that's besides the point. Microsoft "has the OS" (and I might add
Office) because Windows really has been the best general purpose, generally
available OS. Other attempts had potential, but they either keep failing to be
as polished or stable for end-users (desktop Linux), or have not been
available for all PCs (Mac OS, OS X), or they didn't survive for long enough
(OS/2, BeOS). Not sure what monopoly Apple has, but it's no point in arguing
that most of what Apple does is technically excellent and beautifully
executed. Google "has search" because they had and still have the best search
engine and their search engine is indispensable for most people. People
talking about DuckDuckGo never tried doing searches from outside the US.
Google also has Android, Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Maps, all of which are
excellent.

~~~
nugget
No doubt you need to be excellent to create a monopoly (maintenance mode is
much easier). But you also need the ingredients for it to exist in the first
place (network effect, high value/exclusive/monetize-able data, high
competitive barriers). Did Yahoo ever have a market like that, except with
search early on? (They might have been able to do something interesting with
messaging or mail early on to lock in those users, but they didn't.) They had
a lot of eyeballs, a lot of ad salespeople, a lot of ad dollars, (later) a lot
of ad network tech, a lot of great content, a lot of great niche sites
(flickr). But nothing that competitors couldn't enter and replicate fairly
quickly. If you were Yahoo today, and you could execute flawlessly on a single
area of your current business or something closely adjacent to one of your
current businesses (excluding search, which they continue to exit), what would
you pick?

~~~
bad_user
I think Yahoo has had multiple interesting projects of enormous potential.

Yahoo.com, the homepage itself, has been and still is amongst the most
trafficked websites on the Internet. Even now it's in top 5, coming before
Amazon, Wikipedia or Twitter. See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites)

Yahoo Mail existed before Gmail and I don't know what happens in other
countries, but in my country Yahoo Mail is still the most popular web mail.
But they've been bleeding marketshare, because frankly, Yahoo Mail sucks due
to poor UI, poor spam filters and stupid restrictions (like they wouldn't
allow POP unless you had a paid subscription). Compare with Gmail and the rise
of Google Apps. Gmail with btw keeps people locked in Google's ecosystem,
along with Android, insuring that Google's search engine also dominates
mobile, because that's how complementaries work.

Yahoo Messenger was a natural extension of Yahoo Mail. In my country everybody
was on Yahoo Messenger. It had enormous potential for building a social
network and they even made a half assed attempt. Nowadays that's been replaced
by Facebook and Skype. Even Hangouts is more popular amongst my acquaintances,
because Yahoo Messenger also sucks and it's basically dead.

Flickr has been and is still is the best service for amateur and even
professional photographers to share their stuff. Photo sharing is a really big
market. Facebook, Instagram, Google Photos, Imgur, Reddit all of them have a
place in photo sharing, plus I feel there's still enormous untapped potential
in this place. But ALAS they let it stagnate, though I appreciate that in 2015
we finally have mobile apps. But then the Pro subscriptions are now more
expensive and make absolutely no sense, as you're paying for something you can
get with an ad-blocker - a fatal combination IMHO. I was a Pro subscriber in
the past, but not anymore.

Their Search could still be a credible competitor. They just made a deal with
Mozilla for distributing Firefox with Yahoo's search by default. But on one
hand they ditched their own technology, now relying on Bing for their own
results. And also they bring nothing new, while being inferior. They could at
least take a stance on privacy, I mean if you can't compete by being superior,
at least compete by being the ethical choice. But no. And I'm pretty sure many
Firefox users simply switch back to Google, just like myself.

Delicious, just like Google Reader, had enormous potential for a specialized
social network of things. They couldn't see value in it and sold it. Oh well.

------
jonesb6
Couldn't read the article because it appears to be behind a paywall.

On the topic of Marissa Mayer though, has any analysis been done that's an
overview of Meyer's major decisions/actions? I seem to see pieces come out
almost monthly on things she's been doing at Yahoo, but as someone who doesn't
follow executive movers and shakers too much, I don't want to come to an early
judgement without fully understanding what her impact is.

That said, I can't help but feel that many of her early "successes" were
coincidental and overly hyped, mostly as a result of Yahoo's fortunate
investment in Alibaba. If I were currently seeking employment I would be
extremely dubious towards anyone trying to convince me that Yahoo isn't still
running on fumes, despite all the hype.

~~~
roymurdock
Click the "Web" hyperlink under the title of the post. It saves you going to
google and typing in the name of the article.

------
pavornyoh
A genuine question for you. What exactly does Yahoo do? When I think of
Google, I think of search. With Amazon, an ecommerce giant for my shopping
needs comes to mind. But with Yahoo, nothing comes to mind except all the
spams I got when I had their email...

~~~
porsupah
For me, they're:

(1) the owner of Flickr, an acquisition they've tried to futz around with, but
haven't actually managed to damage too much yet. (True, the site design's
become much more heavyweight, but that's a general web design issue)
Interestingly, whilst they tried to go ad-only, removing "Pro" accounts, they
later reinstated them - but with an oddly tone-deaf press release that
trumpeted that account level's availability again, and that rates wouldn't go
up for two years. Fair enough, except Pro had been $25/yr, and they quietly
noted they'd be $50/yr in the future. Is ad-only revenue _that_ strong to
consider dispelling paid accounts?

(2) The original curated web index. Fiendishly difficult to scale, absolutely,
but while it lasted, it was remarkably useful. Could such still work? It'd be
a tremendous challenge, but, Wikipedia might suggest so - it's not as if
Wikipedia is free of dead/changed links, but the footnote links do indeed tend
to be useful.

Yet, as I recall, their finances are/were quite robust - we may well simply
not be Yahoo's audience.

~~~
rodgerd
> Could such still work?

Effectively it would competing with Reddit, HN, Metafilter, and similar sites
where the owners have an army of people curating the web for them, for free.
Which makes it a hard ask. Obviously there's a demand because Reddit, HN, MF,
etc, exist, but enough to make money off of?

~~~
visakanv
Actually IMHO the curation of Reddit and HN is pretty bad. Just my $0.02. My
problem is that it's focused on what's new and relevant. The web sorely needs
(IMHO again) really well curated paths that are organized from first
principles rather than novelty. But I'm not an expert, just a random guy with
an opinion.

------
taurath
There hasn't really been a "focus" at Yahoo in a long while - it feels like
the new HP, where almost all the folks who built previously successful
businesses within it have moved on, while at the same time the company is too
big and integrated to make any meaningful changes or grow new profit centers
(given that their cash cow is stalling).

Its corporate stagflation. They are too diversified and have too many products
to move quickly, generate almost no enthusiasm between either users (all old
guard) or engineers/employees, and there's very little that any executive or
employee can do.

------
jgord
my perception is - they dont love the internet.

they are missing the whole "fuck you, were yahoo, were building the internet"
chutzpah which was so charming, and for which we all have a little glowing
candlewick in our hearts for.

For example .. I really wanted YUI to be usable .. it was so close.. but they
didn't listen when people gave them feedback - eg. telling them to polish the
table grid widget, this control was arguably the reason people were even using
yui at all.

The internet pluggable data feed pipes thing was promising.. almost there but
not quite gelling in the developer group-mind.

They have to hire some really opinionated people and let them loose on
skunkworks [ but realworld ] projects .

I look at the yahoo front page once every 3m to see if its still dead.. I
check my email there due to nostalgia.

They need to forget about ad revenue bullshit, get fired up and make stuff.

I can guarantee there are great people at yahoo gnawing their arms off because
they have nothing to rally around.

They are dying anyway .. its time to hit for the bleachers.

~~~
jgord
I read the article - There is not a single bullet point I give a shit about,
that isn't summarized by their share price.

I look at the yahoo.com front page, I look at msn.com front page - they look
similar and are both spam to a first order approximation.

If they wanted to, they could turn sentiment around in 3 months.

There are so many things they can do :

\- become the datafeed API for the internet

\- buy a startup thats kicking ass [ and leave them alone to win ]

\- buy a tech video review media site thats growing fast

\- put up a $200k prize for best Yahoo innovation app

\- take 7 devs / designers / product people, put them in a room and let them
have at it to make an app

For any of these to work, they have to build a firewall around it, insulating
if from the process of a big company, so it feels like a startup.

------
aws_ls
IMHO Yahoo's biggest mistake was never grokking search. And they had two
opportunities.

First: When Larry and Sergei wanted to sell their search engine to them for a
few millions, in the late 90s. They said they are focused on _curated content_
, which was the future they apparently believed in. (Just paraphrasing from
memory, the stories read in various articles and books on Google & search).
But I also wonder, even if Yahoo had bought them out then, would the world be
different today. Perhaps, the inevitable future of search would have been just
a bit delayed. May be evolved like social networks.

Second: Killing their own search engine in early 2000s, when they had some 30%
search share. That was after they tried using Google's search API. Then they
started to use Bing. I clearly remember that although Google was the best, but
one knew people (lazy friends) who would use Yahoo search. DDG has shown,
there is always a market.

edit: typo

------
sjg007
Things we need: 1\. There needs to be a viable YouTube alternative. 2\. They
should take their experience with NFL streaming to expand that market for the
NFL and add in other TV type content. This can be delivered through apps and
apple tv like devices. College football is a market that would do well with
this. Make a deal with the NCAA. It is impossible for cord cutters to watch
their college team unless they are on watchespn or fox sports go. And even
then you need to borrow your credentials. 3\. Facebook M, Google Now, Siri,
Cortana.. Yahoo needs to have a play here. You might integrate this tightly
with #2.

Buy and/or integrate: Crackle, Pandora, Roku, maybe Spotify, Cinemax.

Why? All these need to be integrated into a consistent platform, each offer ad
revenue opportunity, consolidation. In addition you can ramp up subscription
revenues or on demand revenue.

------
jackgavigan
If you strip out the Alibaba and Yahoo Japan stakes, the market is valuing
Yahoo's "core" at less than $8bn. It has $5.88bn of cash, cash equivalents and
short-term marketable securities on its balance sheet, which means that the
core business is valued at less $1.5bn.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UHMfzlmE7HXY_ph9BN68...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UHMfzlmE7HXY_ph9BN686gOCiji1bQ-
rsbnjtKD3oho/edit?usp=sharing)

The balance sheet figure for "Property and equipment" is higher than that.

[http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/YHOO/900583056x0x1637...](http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/YHOO/900583056x0x163717/e3b6723a-7d29-4a37-8dff-5bcf3a67d1d3/YHOO_III_BalanceSheetGAAP.pdf)

~~~
adventured
In fact it doesn't mean that. Its the assets on Yahoo's balance sheet that are
being discounted by investors. Yahoo's business receives a multiple rather
than a discount - whether that's a multiple on sales or earnings.

Cash and assets held on a corporate balance sheet are basically never $1 to $1
accounted for in a market cap. You can easily see that in action on the
balance sheets of: Berkshire Hathaway, Apple, Comcast, Time Warner Cable.

Are we to pretend that Berkshire Hathaway's business is worth ~$140 billion
after we strip out all of its assets (cash, stock holdings etc)? So its
earnings are getting a 7 or 8 multiple? Obviously that's not actually how
valuations work. If you stripped out all of their assets, they'd very likely
still get a fair market valuation on the operating business and its potential,
perhaps 13-15 times earnings.

A similar bogus claim was made that Yahoo was worth less than zero, when its
Alibaba stake was at its peak. That's not actually how things work in reality,
that scenario solely exists in a calculation.

In reality, if you spin off all of Yahoo's assets (specifically Japan /
Alibaba), the business would still be given a multiple, a meaningful
valuation. Even lowly AOL was still worth $4.4 billion in the Verizon
acquisition, and Yahoo's business is two to three times more valuable than
that.

There isn't a single example in the public market, in which a corporation with
a relatively clean balance sheet, and $4 billion in sales, is given a negative
~$X billion valuation - much less a company that has historically been given
high valuations as a semi-tech company. Which proves how absurdly wrong the
negative value premise is (or the $1 to $1 asset discounting method applied to
the assets, which are clearly not worth $1 to $1 in the market cap given
taxation issues alone).

~~~
jackgavigan
_> In reality, if you spin off all of Yahoo's assets (specifically Japan /
Alibaba), the business would still be given a multiple, a meaningful
valuation._

I'm sure it would but right now, the sum of the parts is greater than the
market value of the whole. That says something about investors' expectations
for the future prospects of the company.

------
ZenoArrow
Am I missing something here? Isn't Yahoo still highly profitable? So some
senior execs left, so what, I'm sure they'll still have plenty of people
wanting to work for them.

Look beyond the spin from the WSJ. Look at the profits. Are Yahoo losing
money?

------
pjzedalis
Marissa comes from Google so I'd like to see more developer focus. Here are
some ideas:

\- Buy Joyent. Get's you into the cloud game and you gain SmartOS and Node
chops.

\- Buy BitTorrent and capitalize on its growth and the new sync technology.

\- Make YUI popular again in the responsive web era. Tumblr, Flickr, Develpr?

\- Probably should stop trying to out-Netflix Netflix. Community was never
going to work but I understand the thinking.

\- Somebody is going to buy Groove Music (Xbox Music). I hope it's not Yahoo.

~~~
yeukhon
I say none of these.

* Too many "cloud" competitors, enough with trying to squeeze a margin.

* I wouldn't want to compete with Box, DropBox, GDrive, S3, OneDrive, or BitTorrent Sync. To support enterprise customer at this level, I think is something Yahoo! not too familiar with.

* Another Javascript framework to resurrect, probably time to rethink about how many JS developers you have to hire to to maintain the high visibility and demand from the community.

* Community was a good show, but Yahoo's UI for their video content is just bloat. Too much information, graphic wise not too appealing. They have a shot, but so few people in my circle know about Yahoo video. But I think it still has a shot.

* Why would Microsoft sell Xbox Music?

I think the best thing for Yahoo to do, is to do sports and finance. They can
continue to build contents around it. Yes there is ESPNSport, MLB, NBA etc but
Yahoo can probably do better if they focus on building a community. They
already have a huge sport community, why not use it? They already have content
makers so make finance more attractive, try to go after Bloomberg.

Social is dominated by Facebook and Twitter (and their acquired products like
Instagram and Vine), but there is still much to explorer around social, not
just adding friends.

------
smegel
Google is getting platform locking, much like Microsoft. Even if Yahoo did
come out with a world class Docs, or Email, or Youtube, or Blogger, or Sites,
or AppEngine - I would still stick with the Google equivalent because I am all
connected. I sign into Chrome or an Android device and everything just works
and syncs.

I am locked into Google and I don't even have a Google+ account.

~~~
IndianAstronaut
All Yahoo has to do is commit to no tracking of users and I would switch in a
heartbeat.

~~~
pgodzin
So create a product that is hard to make money off of and impossible to track
how users are using the applications in order to improve them?

------
Steko
See also news this morning that y-mail is blocking users who are running ad-
blockers; I'd bet their confidentiality terms are headed for a revision too as
the user info fire sale gets underway.

------
gcb0
the fact that the SVP of marketing left to join the lowest grade studio
Hollywood have is worrisome. so much so I'd think it was a demission and not
someone leaving on will...

------
teh_klev
For the less gifted, such as myself, at getting around paywalls:

[https://archive.is/8NoAM](https://archive.is/8NoAM)

------
dude_abides
"The CEO has hired management consultant McKinsey & Co. to look for areas of
the company to cut, said a person familiar with the matter."

Shudder.

------
zerocrat
Can anyone share the article? cp /wsj/article /hn/comments

~~~
jonknee
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Yahoo+CEO+Marissa+Mayer+Face...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Yahoo+CEO+Marissa+Mayer+Faces+Morale+Challenge)

~~~
zerocrat
Shit I am dumb. Thanks for the lesson. *Facepalm.

~~~
jonknee
Even better, just for this sort of thing there is a link called "web" at the
top of the page that links to Google with the title. It's in the same line as
flag.

------
MrGando
Is the story available to non-subscribers?

------
jacquesm
Has Yahoo! stopped the lay-offs?

------
WalterSear
Morale challenges tend to go hand in hand with moral challenges.

