
Marissa Mayer Has Completed Step One - steven
https://medium.com/backchannel/marissa-mayer-has-completed-step-one-71dc31912855
======
insertion
This is possibly the most source-friendly piece of tech journalism I've read
in a while. I don't think there is a single point in that piece that would
make Yahoo PR the least bit uncomfortable. Credit where it's due, the article
is incredibly well written and beautifully presented. It's just a shame to see
such unquestioning faith in a source. One by one, Levy hammers away at every
recent criticism of Yahoo. Anything that could not justified was deemed to be
overblown.

"Some of the various flaps involving her leadership were crazily overblown,
like her personal child care accommodations, or an edict against working at
home that affected a tiny percentage of Yahoo’s workforce."

Every original fact in this article is information Yahoo would obviously want
to share, like the success of its revamped ad platform. Based on the way he
has failed to question anything else that Mayer has done during her tenure, it
is hard to believe that these facts were questioned and examined in any
detail.

Don't get me wrong: I think that Mayer may be doing a good job. I'm not too
sure either way. I just think, as a piece of tech reporting, this is
embarrassing.

~~~
fineIllregister
Calling it "reporting" is a stretch. It's a blog post.

~~~
smacktoward
You know who Steven Levy is, right?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Levy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Levy)

And in his own words ([https://medium.com/@stevenlevy/im-moving-to-
medium-6869c0e32...](https://medium.com/@stevenlevy/im-moving-to-
medium-6869c0e3262c)), he was hired by Medium to " _establish a tech hub that
strives to bring well-reported, lively, and meaningful reporting and writing
to what is already shaping up as a terrific platform for the written word._ "

~~~
declan
I agree the article is favorable to Yahoo, but it strikes me as likely that
the author conducted interviews, reviewed the facts, and wrote what he thought
was the truth. Some folks on this thread may disagree with his conclusions,
but that by itself does not make it bad journalism.

Disclaimer: Steven is a friend, occasionally a competitor (before I left to
found Recent.io), and someone who once approached me to work with him.

------
geebee
I'm one of those people with a yahoo email account, mainly because I'm on the
old side now and got it way back when yahoo email was, well, kind of like
hotmail for people even older than me. The article refers to people like me as
loyalists, but I'm really not. I honestly don't like my yahoo email account.

It's not technology, it's the the nature of the company itself. I know all
websites want to keep you around, but the difference between using gmail and
yahoo mail is remarkable.

I just went to mail.google.com, and I see my email. Now I'm going to yahoo
mail… there's a big ad for life insurance next to my messages. Above them is a
slightly larger link, intended to look like an email messages, for "rich dad,
poor dad." Actually, something interesting has happened lately… the link
expands in size about 3 seconds after the page has loaded. I'm starting to
wonder if yahoo has noticed that if they do this, they will expand the ad just
at the moment that the users wanting to check their email click on the first,
top message, leading them instead to click on an ad, increasing "click
through".

I'll admit, I'm leaning toward the tinfoil hat side of suspicious with that
last one, but there's a reason I've started to think this way. Go to yahoo's
front page, and it's click bait city. It seems like yahoo will do everything
in its power to make sure I don't do what it is I came to the site to do, run
a web search, or check my email.

In short, it appears to me that yahoo is still a media company, following the
portal model, trying to get people to stay on the site for reasons that had
nothing to do with why they came to the site. And by click bait, I mean titles
like "the one medical test you shouldn't skip!", or "the 5 signs that he's
manipulating you". In short, I'm starting to wonder if having a yahoo email
account is actually a risk to my ability to concentrate.

Maybe yahoo is becoming more of an engineering/technology company, maybe not.
If Mayer can make this happen, that'd be quite an accomplishment. There's
definitely a huge legacy of specifically intending go _not_ be an engineering
company.

~~~
nitrogen
_Actually, something interesting has happened lately… the link expands in size
about 3 seconds after the page has loaded. I 'm starting to wonder if yahoo
has noticed that if they do this, they will expand the ad just at the moment
that the users wanting to check their email click on the first, top message,
leading them instead to click on an ad, increasing "click through"._

This happens _all the time_ when I read Ars Technica on my phone. That
effective clickjacking, combined with the GE puff pieces of late, have notably
reduced the frequency with which I visit Ars.

~~~
CamperBob2
You have to wonder just how stupid the advertisers are. They, and not the
site's users, are the ones who are _really_ being played for suckers.

------
MollyR
Is it strange that people defend Mayer so much ? I find it a little strange.
I'm having a hard time figuring what the baseline of criticism is for a tech
ceo, and how much they get defended from it.

I know Jobs, Gates, Ballmer, and Zuckerberg, have a crazy amount of criticism,
and usually the (if it ever comes) defense comes later after the
company/project gets huge or financially successful.

~~~
IndianAstronaut
I definitely think she deserves criticism for stopping the work from home
policy. This industry had a huge chance to move away from traditional office
work to a much more flexible type of work environment. Her move put a
significant dent in that.

~~~
freyr
No! Her job as CEO was to fix Yahoo. If the work-from-home program was a
problem at Yahoo, it was her responsibility to address that.

You speak as if it's a foregone conclusion that working from home is a good
idea, but not everybody agrees with that. So you're suggesting that she should
have made a decision she felt was bad for her company to advance your personal
agenda, and that's a little bit crazy.

~~~
Natsu
I'm honestly not sure if Yahoo is "fixable." I don't use any of their products
and I can't see any reason to change that. Everybody else does everything they
can do better or is utterly irrelevant to me. But even nobodies can get people
on board with a compelling product--I still remember abandoning Infoseek for
the then-unknown Google--so it's up to them to create a reason to use it.

------
mathattack
I don't like when people say, "Just look at the stock price." The stock
benefit came from not undoing the work of her predecessors who purchased Ali
Baba. The article does jump into this later.

Turnarounds take a while, and this is indeed Step 1. I can't think of another
"It" company that returned to greatness. Perhaps AOL is the closes. (For those
who argue for Apple, I don't think it was the "It" company the first time
around)

~~~
001sky
I don't think yahoo was ever really an 'it' company...they were (maybe) an 'it
stock', but that's a who nother ball of wax. At the company level, in terms of
having a "category killer" product, they never had one.

In order for Yahoo to ever right the ship, that is what they need. They need
to become indispensible for either offering something unqiue or something of
unqiue value.

Their investment in alibaba was close to that...both unique to investors and
great value...where else could you a private equity stake in a huge chineese
start-up?

The issue there was the "killer product" was a specialized financial asset
with a finite life. This is distinct from something with an evergreen consumer
service or product that will be monetizable over the long run.

The task for the CEO is can take the capirtal on hand and start building good
(evergreen) products?

If nothing else she should be given (retain) some capital and another 3 years
before making a final judgement. At that stage, take a look at the pipleline
and if there is nothing in it...that will be a signal.

Yahoo right now is like a pharma company which had a blockbuster come off of
patent...its all about the ability to re-plenish the pipeline...the profits
that happened previously are nearly irrelevant except for providing the
position/capital to recruit people for the next round of product development.

~~~
edwinnathaniel
Does a "media" company ever had an "it" (killer-product/cash cow) long-term
product?

Yahoo! is not a software company (yet).

Comparing Yahoo! against Google, Microsoft, or Apple seems like comparing
NBC/ABC/Fox againt those 3 no/

~~~
mathattack
It used to be a software company - it was Google before Google. I think the
media distinction is a little false.

Several media companies have had long term products: The Big 3 networks pre-
cable, HBO, Dreamworks...

------
greenyoda
For a more pessimistic take on Yahoo's outlook, have a look at this earnings
analysis from Forbes, which was posted recently on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9133430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9133430)

The author claims that Yahoo's core business is growing less profitable and
its numbers are propped up by non-recurring revenue.

------
dlu
I like that phrasing in the title. She's done a lot, but there's clearly a lot
more to do. This is a well written piece of long-form.

I do often forget about small things like the Weather app, which is absolutely
delightful. I hope they apply that level of polish to their other apps.
Personally I think they should skip small apps such as Weather and just dive
right meatier categories such as Mail

------
smegel
Which step is creating a killer product?

~~~
illicium
Nah, just buy a startup that has a decent product and a bunch of users, inject
more and more ads until the product dies, rinse and repeat.

------
Animats
It's progress. But the real problem was that Yahoo got out of search. Search
is the cash cow of the industry.

------
photorized
31 months is a long time though.

~~~
protomyth
Steve Jobs at 31 months hadn't got to the iPod yet.

~~~
pavlov
Yeah. At his 31 months back at Apple, Jobs was getting ready to launch the
Power Mac G4 Cube and the Flower Power iMacs... The investment community
thought he had lost it, and Apple's stock price collapsed. (There was also
that dot-com bust thing, I know.)

At the same time, Apple was building the iPod. When product cycles are long
and vision spans even longer, current performance may not be indicative of
what's coming.

~~~
alextgordon
That's a little uncharitable. The original iMacs were ridiculously successful,
you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing one.

~~~
pavlov
Sure. But by 2001, the 15" CRT form factor was getting stale. Apple tried to
refresh the design with patterns named "Flower Power" and "Blue Dalmatian":

[http://apple-history.com/imac_cdrw](http://apple-history.com/imac_cdrw)

These got, um, mixed reviews, and didn't sell well. (Even the famous taste of
Jobs+Ive failed sometimes...)

------
leppr
Only thing I hope is that this company will die out before shelling out
another billion at the next big social thing and kill it like they know so
well how to do.

~~~
easytiger
I had another comment downvoted and invisibanned for suggesting that yahoo is
basically an SEO spamhouse now. Look at their landing page in the uk at least.
Right now it is articles about people's sex lives, adverts for makeup, adverts
and viral videos

~~~
leppr
Oh yes I would downvote you too, don't you realize the effort that comes into
crafting all this content that you qualify of spam? Many people have to come
together and figure out ways of making seemingly non-intelligent beings click
on things. This is in no way a small feat and I must say they are very good at
it, almost Buzzfeed-level of perfection.

------
yarrel
Eleven to go?

------
bonn1
My recent experience with Yahoo:

A while ago after I installed uTorrent all my browsers (Chrome, Firefox and
Safari) switched to Yahoo as my default search. Then I changed them back to
Google.

After a while (I guess after I rebooted the computer) again all browsers
showed Yahoo again. I googled for some help I found a hint that I have to
disable and remove the 'Searchme' extension. I did so.

After a while (I guess after I rebooted the computer) again all browsers
showed Yahoo again and the Searchme extension showed up again. And still
Searchme is there—I took a screenshot
[http://imgur.com/OsH9o0m](http://imgur.com/OsH9o0m)

EDIT: Why the downvotes?

~~~
bhayden
uTorrent is pretty terrible these days, I steer everyone away from it.

~~~
danw3
And in what direction do you steer them?

~~~
nullren
transmission

~~~
EC1
+1 for transmission, great app.

~~~
droidist2
The song is really good too.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYaN2w6rcgk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYaN2w6rcgk)

