
What Happened to All 53 of Marissa Mayer's Yahoo Acquisitions - ghosh
http://gizmodo.com/heres-what-happened-to-all-of-marissa-mayers-yahoo-acqu-1781980352?utm_source=nextdraft
======
davedx
"She deployed quick fixes to solve Yahoo’s morale problems, including
expanding parental leave and hiring high-profile celebrities to run the
company’s media division."

Didn't she also cancel work from home arrangements? I think it's highly
debatable if that was good for morale...

~~~
ianhawes
Additionally, she had a nursery built in her office.

~~~
pawadu
So the 2 good things she did at Yahoo:

    
    
        1. Parental leave
        2. A nursery
    

Now, I wonder how things would have been if she herself was not pregnant when
she joined Yahoo

~~~
gadders
2\. a nursery _for herself_

AFAIK only she used it.

~~~
effingwewt
Not only that, but other employees had to watch this after losing their work-
from-home "privileges". Was in all the big papers, caused quite the kerfuffle.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-who-just-
banned...](http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-who-just-banned-
working-from-home-paid-to-have-a-nursery-built-at-her-office-2013-2)

------
zuluwill
Reid Hoffman interviewed Marissa Mayer for his blitzscaling lectures at
Stanford and she gives some insights into her mobile strategy and why she made
these acquisitions. In short and paraphrasing massively Yahoo had a tiny team
dedicated to mobile and she wanted to change this fast. Full interview here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS9mzbgI_qk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS9mzbgI_qk)

~~~
spriggan3
> Yahoo had a tiny team dedicated to mobile and she wanted to change this fast

I'm not sure what was the point of buying Tumblr 1 Billion if Yahoo had a
mobile strategy problem. Tumblr isn't big on mobile.

~~~
vorotato
lol what do you mean tumblr isn't big on mobile. 78%. percent of Tumblr's
audience that access it through a mobile device. Their whole site is tailored
for mobile.

~~~
spriggan3
lol, you didn't get the memo , did you ?

[http://mashable.com/2016/06/15/how-yahoo-derailed-
tumblr/](http://mashable.com/2016/06/15/how-yahoo-derailed-tumblr/)

~~~
effingwewt
Since we're being snarky- perhaps read the articles you toss out? It
specifically says that a major cause was the merging of their
sales/marketing/ads teams and installing middle management (between Marissa
and Karp) who knew little-to-nothing about Tumblr, much less how to run it.
It's not like Yahoo bought them out to turn them away from mobile. Or even to
help Yahoo become more mobilized. They wanted to monetize Tumblr and gain from
it's younger audience.

------
IkmoIkmo
I think it's interesting to note Marissa took over in July 2012, since then
the stock price rose by 140%. During that same time Google did 152%, Microsoft
did 75% and Apple did 15%.

Of course this is only a small part of the story, but at the end of the day
she works for the owners of the company, the shareholders, and they care about
their share price. They've done quite well compared to others, under her
leadership.

Am I excited about Yahoo, or would I invest, or do I think it's a well run
company? Nonono. But there's a narrative that Marissa's doing a terrible job,
and contextualised by a declining trend for at least half a decade prior to
her joining the company, and shareholders faring quite well so far, I'd say
it's nowhere as bad as people think.

~~~
matwood
> I think it's interesting to note Marissa took over in July 2012, since then
> the stock price rose by 140%.

Yep. I bought YHOO when she was hired, and it worked out well. She may not
have been the catalyst for they stock price rise (Alibaba), but she was the
catalyst that made me purchase some shares.

~~~
vorotato
Yeah, and the core business is still waaay undervalued. Plenty of people use
Yahoo, it's just not us.

------
danieltillett
Is talent really in that short supply that acqui-hiring makes sense? Wouldn't
Yahoo have been better off just paying a million dollars a year to each of the
developers Ms Mayer managed to bring on board?

~~~
spriggan3
Yahoo has a management problem, not a talent problem. There are plenty of
talents at Yahoo capable of building and delivering great apps. Most of these
acquisitions under Mayer were worthless and wouldn't fix Yahoo's internal
issues.

~~~
danieltillett
It sounds like you have an insiders's perspective. From my very outsider's
perspective it would appear that Yahoo did not manage to make much of the
talent and opportunities it had or acquired.

~~~
WalterSear
Not really. It looks likes c-suit hubris and narcissism.

------
Keyframe
You know, at first I thought she would turn Yahoo around due to her cachet and
Yahoo still having a ground to leap from. I dismissed naysayers by writing
that down to chauvinism and envy our little world is full of. Now, I'm pretty
sure she stalled and nose-dived Yahoo to the ground. At first there seemed to
be a strategy behind it all, to build-up Yahoo as a media empire of sorts.
However, then random acquisitions started and it showed lack of either
strategy or focus. Buy shit and instead of building upon what you bought, they
moved onto more buying, while ignoring previously bought stuff. That's just
bad leadership, lack of strategy.

~~~
mxuribe
I still think she has cachet and i still believe there is (to a large degree)
plenty of chauvinism being thrown at her. Maybe she is a fit leader but dove
into a mess that is far worse behind the scenes than the public can
understand? Maybe she had no help from her internal staff/teams? And/Or, maybe
yes, she is human and could have made a few mistakes? Maybe her skills make
her a better COO-type of person as opposed to CEO? It sucks to see the state
of yahoo in general these days (I attribute this statement of mine to sheer
nostalgia of the older inter-webs)...but it sucks _also_ because I have been
cheering on Marissa Mayer, and hoping she succeeds both throughout hr time in
google as well as here on yahoo. Good leader / bad leader, I don't know...but
I'll keep pulling for her.

~~~
Keyframe
I'm sure she has chauvinism thrown at her. That's the sad state of the world
we live in. I always tend to give positive benefit of the doubt to people.
However, her results have shown lack of yield. That's all that matters. She's
been at it for four years now and hasn't turned the ship around. Only two
conclusions can be met here. Either the ship has already sunk before she came
on board or she wasn't fit for the role / bad leadership. Even if she didn't
have the support from people around her, that's still lack of leadership.
After all, it's your job, as a leader, to persuade people into doing various
things (do things, buy things, sell things, morale, whatever...). Results
speak for themselves. She has got to go. The patient is flatlining.

------
ssreeniv
Inspite of making so many mistakes, Yahoo is still one of the top 10 most
visited sites. What is working for them?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites)

~~~
GoToRO
I still use Yahoo Mail because GMail was changing too often and I had got
tired from hunting buttons. Also you can select to see only unread emails in
Yahoo. Also, if you send an HTML email to an Yahoo email address you can put
the CSS in a <style> tag and Yahoo servers will deal with it nicely and the
CSS will work when you read the email on Yahoo's website.

But all this Yahoo is dying nonsense did bring some changes. They modified the
UI code and now, sometimes you select an email but you can't click any actions
(delete etc.) because the app is confused about the state in which it is. It
happent less recently.

Then they pulled Yahoo Messenger, which is how I was notified of new emails,
while not having ready the mobile app.

Thankfully the mobile app is really good and I have my other account on it
too.

And the ads... they are good. As oposed to google that will follow me with the
same ad for weeks even if I already made my purchase or maybe it was just a
curiosity. With Yahoo it's more like "here are some things people your age
look at".

~~~
noer
Honest question/not trolling: How often do you style personal/non-
business/marketing emails?

~~~
GoToRO
By writting CSS directly, never. But then you would think all the other newer,
"better" companies would have this little detail fixed already. But they
don't. And it becomes hugely important as soon as you open your own online
shop and you want to send a proper HTML email.

------
Grue3
At least it isn't bankrupt, as opposed to Gizmodo's parent company.

~~~
marknutter
What does that have to do with anything?

~~~
sb057
It's just a bit humorous that Gizmodo put out an article that (in essence)
criticizes Yahoo's bad business decisions, while at the same time Gawker is
filing for bankruptcy.

~~~
pavs
Gawker is not filling for bankruptcy for bad business decisions, it's filing
for bankruptcy because they were sued for making a questionable editorial
decision and lost the case.

------
fleaflicker
Trying to acquire talent is not a terrible approach. From
[http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html)

 _In theory you could beat the death spiral by buying good programmers instead
of hiring them. You can get programmers who would never have come to you as
employees by buying their startups..._

~~~
stinkytaco
I'm not sure if I would consider Paul Graham -- a man who largely makes his
living by mentoring engineers who get "bought" \-- and a terribly reliable
source on this. Of course he thinks buying startups is a good way to beat the
death spiral since he's in the business of producing startups.

And even if we accept that it is a good strategy, all it did for Yahoo was
lease a few engineers for a year after their startup was purchased, only to
have them leave a year later to do another startup. Either that or struggle to
integrate a bunch of disparate teams that you purchased based on the product
they made, rather than how they might best serve your mission.

~~~
devchix
I feel like there's a fundamental failure in this model: create and grow a
business to be a target acquisition, then cash out. This implies an untested
business riding on trend and PR fluff, whose creator was never committed
enough to see it fully realized.

~~~
stinkytaco
Failure for whom?

If I'm the one cashing out, then I think it's a successful model.

It's also driven by past successes in this arena. Over the years products like
Powerpoint, Android and YouTube have all been acquisitions that have gone on
to be huge successes for the parent company (I can actually think of a few
more Google purchases such as Waze and DoubleClick).

Of course, that means other companies see this as a successful strategy and
attempt to replicate it. Now there's a rush to find the best acquisitions
targets, more companies enter the market, and at least some will be acquired
based on hype alone, causing some companies who focus more on their hype than
their product. Bubble ensues.

I think the real failure is at companies like Yahoo who buy the hype and not
the product.

EDIT: I should also note that for some companies, it seems unlikely that they
could have scaled without an acquisition. Making phone hardware or hosting so
many videos is expensive. In their case, acquisition was really the only
viable strategy for success.

------
notacoward
> Marissa Mayer turned Yahoo into a startup lottery.

Yahoo just participates in the startup lottery like every other company its
size. The lottery already existed, and Yahoo was already part of it, long
before Mayer. Ditto after Mayer, I'm sure. Don't blame her for one of Silicon
Valley's fundamental pathologies.

~~~
asimuvPR
Exactly. They just went with it because its "normal". Either way, didn't Paul
Graham sell a company to yahoo and then started YC?

------
hkmurakami
This really is a bit sad to see. Tumblr by all accounts is just a porn
aggregator site at this point, so the lone possible bright is BrightRoll...
maybe?

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
I don't know what kind of tumblrs you're looking at, but this is certainly not
my experience.

~~~
uptown
I though he was pretty clear about what kind of tumblrs he's looking at.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
I wonder if it's like those people getting salty at google auto-completes
without realizing the influence of their search histories.

------
vorotato
Lots of complaining at someone who took the stock from 15 dollars to 30
dollars. It was take some risks or die. Yahoo had long gone stale. You can
argue she took the wrong risks, but you'd probably do just as bad. That's why
they call them risks.

~~~
vorotato
Also lets not forget they had a lot of extra cash flow due to the pushed sale
of a good chunk of their alibaba stake. Surely any sane businessperson would
conclude that for them to just... sit on it is not a wise decision.

------
tuna-piano
Does anyone know the median price for these deals? I assume it's highly
skewed. What would a 5 person failing mobile app get, and how long would they
be locked in to Yahoo for?

------
mmaunder
"Hey, your company isn’t working, therefore we’re bringing you on for the
talent. We’re not interested in the product and service you have in
market,...."

If your goal is to increase revenue and profitability, surely buying companies
that have demonstrated they're great at losing money is a really bad idea?
You're hand picking individuals who are the very best in the business at
blowing investor cash.

------
tuna-piano
When Marissa Mayer states that Yahoo "is the fastest growing startup in the
world", I hope she doesn't actually believe that or take pride in that- and is
just saying it for hype.

They invested 2.8B to produce no meaningful profit and only a fraction of that
in revenue. Under her logic, only looking at the output, they'd be a faster
growing startup if they just put that money into a bank account.

~~~
vorotato
Businesses take risks to create value. It's what they do, and if nobody did it
putting money into a bank account wouldn't actually make money. If you want ~0
risk money buy some bonds, but startups are arguably some of the riskiest (and
most rewarding) investments. In that regard I'd say she's 100% spot on.

------
perseusprime11
What happens when you take some body who is good in the UX department and ask
them to run a company? Peter's principle is what happened.

------
staticelf
Why did they shut down all the apps/software that they acquired? Why not
simply to continue with the service like they did with tumblr?

------
fforflo
> "Gizmodo also made him cry once."

Really?! The original post [0] wasn't even necessary. But refering to it
again! Come on...

0: [http://gizmodo.com/5830076/how-i-made-a-15-year-old-app-
deve...](http://gizmodo.com/5830076/how-i-made-a-15-year-old-app-developer-
cry)

------
dhimes
What is Yahoo doing in mobile? What does it mean that "the team joined Yahoo's
mobile unit?"

~~~
jccalhoun
i use yahoo weather app. it uses flickr pics from your current location as its
background.

~~~
HillaryBriss
I used to use that weather app too. Loved it. Then I tried the AccuWeather app
and I became convinced that its forecasts were more accurate.

------
Lagged2Death
Did Gizmodo do a similar comprehensive rundown of Eric Schmidt's acquisitions?
Or of Mark Zuckerberg's acquisitions? Have they in fact done anything so
exhaustive and pointed for even one _male_ tech CEO, of which there are far
more to choose from?

~~~
existencebox
I downvoted you, here is why:

Yahoo is a company on the brink of a sale, currently undergoing (some
perception of) slow collapse. The gender of the CEO is to me _entirely_ aside
the point. There has been quite a bit of press surrounding Nest's CEO as well,
companies in turmoil attract media, it's "business soap opera".

Now to play devils advocate, it may be fair to ask if she is receiving _undue_
attention due to the above, but given my anecdotal views of high profile
businesspeople being put under the microscope when failures come to light (and
the fact that it's rather an occams razor explanation; "rubbernecking" in the
broader sense) as well as the fact that it's very easy to cite broad
examinations of aquisitions even without the prompting of a "newsworthy" event
(from an EXTREMELY cursory googling [https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/25/the-
age-of-acquisitions/](https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/25/the-age-of-
acquisitions/)).

Frankly, your statement feels like a strawman LOOKING for there to be some
gender aggression when that just isn't merited over an examination of a
company with some rather entertaining decision history, that I at least would
have been inclined to read about regardless of any other information.

------
simonswords82
What blows my mind is how positive the HN crowd were about the acquisition of
Tumblr at the time:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5737185](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5737185)

Everybody on HN now appears to be firmly in the camp of "Tumblr was a terrible
acquisition, it was obvious at the time, what a disaster". Now we read about
the other 52 companies that for the most part are also disasters.

My questions are:

How did Marissa manage to purchase a whopping 53 companies and waste so much
money before somebody realised that Yahoo was collapsing from the inside out?

Is this all on her shoulders?

Surely the board signed these deals off? Are they equally culpable here?

~~~
pjc50
No, that thread was talking about it being positive for _Tumblr_ , and the
community thereon. Or at least not destroying it by trying to clean up the
NSFW blogs.

I can't see any of those posts saying it would be great for Yahoo or its
investors.

~~~
whack
Did you see the very first comment?

" _I really think Yahoo 's back in the game now. I would never have used yahoo
before. Now hundred thousands of people are. And they are from the new
generation._"

------
tuna-piano
Only 6 months!?

Why would any corporation think entrepreneurs at heart would want to stay once
they got there?

------
ara24
53 acquisitions in 4 years (13/year) seems like a lot. I wonder if they kept
track.

------
wmil
Has anyone ever figured out what the point of the Summly acquisition was?

------
jondubois
What's worse is that in spite of the ridiculous sums that Yahoo paid, the
technical talent that they bought in was of pretty average quality.

She just bought over-hyped companies run by a bunch of kids. These kids were
better at self-promotion (and perhaps business) than at producing great
software.

Really good software engineers are not in the public view - They are too busy
learning and writing code to waste their time fundraising, blogging about
their technical achievements or chatting up journalists.

Marissa Mayer turned Yahoo into a startup lottery. What's left of Yahoo is
just a freakshow of capitalist excess.

I don't see how this acquisition spree was ever going to 'attract talent'.
Seriously; would any talented, hard working, self-respecting engineer want to
have some entitled multimillionaire lucky startup brat as their boss?

~~~
codecamper
You sound a little bit jealous. What apps / web services have you made?

~~~
theodoredziuba
He sounds envious, not jealous.

Jealousy is the fear that someone else will take what you have. Envy is when
you want what someone else has.

~~~
guessmyname
Reminds me of that scene from The Simpsons [1].

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+simpsons+je...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+simpsons+jealousy+and+envy)

------
2array
You may think this was harmless, but you've greatly contributed to our rampant
inequality.

~~~
dang
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11915829](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11915829)
and marked it off-topic.

