
The Yahoo Problem - supster
http://sapan.svbtle.com/the-yahoo-paradox
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gregdoesit
_> So Mayer had a plan to bolster Yahoo’s mobile offerings and once again make
it a top internet destination. However, a plan like this has three drawbacks:
1) Developing desirable well-trafficked mobile properties requires lots of
hard-to-hire-for mobile design, engineering, and product talent. So Mayer
chose to acquihire promising mobile startups instead._

Actually, when Mayer came on to Yahoo as CEO, Yahoo recruited pretty
efficiently. I am a decent mobile engineer and I was _really_ tempted to apply
when a recruiter reached out. It was the wrong moment for me, being really
happy at my job that time - a year later or before I would have likely
proceeded with the interview.

Another strong mobile engineer friend of mine got rejected on the Yahoo
interviews and was pretty disappointed at the time. The story recruiters were
telling was that they are builing a bunch of greenfield mobile projects, as
well as having a couple of "startups within a big startup", with the financial
security of Yahoo. This was very credible at the time and I'm sure they did
get a lot of engineering talent into the company.

I do not know what the main things were that went wrong. However I would not
pinpoint it to recruitment or lack of engineering talent: they did well on
that. As an outsider engineer my guess would be culture and non consistent
strategy or vision. Building mobile apps for the sake of building mobile apps
and getting users was never a viable vision even in 2012.

~~~
potatolicious
Agree - I know a few mobile folks (designers and devs) who went to Yahoo
during this time and it definitely seemed like an exciting place to be.

I remember in that period Yahoo successfully turned their reputation around
from "eww why are you applying there" to "wow maybe I should too". They were
doing some very cool greenfield stuff, and with the release of the new Weather
app (among others) they looked like they could walk the walk.

Ultimately many of these products sputtered, but of all the things Yahoo did
right under Mayer, recruiting and industry reputation was definitely one of
the bright spots.

Though that said, none of the people I know lasted very long at all, so I
suspect there's some deeper dysfunction.

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russellbeattie
Another mis-analysis of Yahoo. The situation is and had been very clear- Yahoo
has never accepted what it is: A conglomeration of useful web services and
utilities. Not sexy, but used by millions and potentially very profitable with
properly tiered service levels. Instead it has always called itself a "media
company" and chased after the success of its competitors. When I worked there
a decade ago it wanted to be Google. Now it wants to be Facebook, YouTube or
god knows what. This, combined with the inexperience, ego and vanity of Mayer
assured Yahoo would continue its slide to irrelevance. Very sad.

~~~
supster
Would you agree though that Yahoo has not kept up with users moving their
attention to smartphones, and there will be a corresponding loss in users and
profit in the long run? If so, I believe Mayer was trying to correct this
through her efforts.

~~~
russellbeattie
Amazingly, Yahoo Stocks, Weather and Mail are in the top 25 apps by usage. But
this isn't because of any particularly impressive strategic thinking on Y's
part. Their big efforts like Katie Couric and Community flopped like crazy and
their "MaVeNS" strategy (if you want to call it that) is pure stupidity:
Mobile, Native, Video and Social? Mobile isn't a product, and even just as a
general focus, Google seems to be making a bundle from the PC Web still, so
why would Yahoo not continue to put massive effort into its most well known
service? Native advertising is... mobile advertising, so OK. Video as a
category is _owned_ by YouTube, Netflix and various big media companies like
HBO, so focusing on that is as futile as focusing on Social which is _owned_
by Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. In summery, there's no strategy. Mobile
is obvious, advertising is how Y makes money so that's a no brainer, and the
rest is suicide.

Mayer's thinking is simplistic, shortsighted and driven by pure vanity.
Nothing she's doing now or is willing to do can fix Yahoo.

~~~
nerfhammer
> Mobile isn't a product, and even just as a general focus, Google seems to be
> making a bundle from the PC Web still, so why would Yahoo not continue to
> put massive effort into its most well known service?

Because mobile is growing faster.

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chollida1
His point about Yahoo being a conglomerate the day BABA started trading I
think is really important. One of the biggest issues for the CFO of any public
conglomerate is that it becomes very easy to see which divisions are weak.

As he mentions, when the value of BABA grew it actually created a problem for
Yahoo in that it made it clearer to analysts what the real value of Yahoo was.
Yahoo leadership must have know this and realized this could cut down the time
they had for their turnaround.

To show the other side of being a conglomerate there are a few other
interesting companies that operate like conglomerates in Yahoo's space but do
so well...

Look at Microsoft....They are essentailly a conglomerate now, most people coud
name their revenue stream... OS, Office, Servers and tools, Azure and what
ever Bing, Xbox etc are rolled into.

Every reporting quarter people can see with a fair bit of clarity how well
their search and console efforts are doing, and people did point to the huge
losses early on for that division. If Microsoft didn't have such strong
leadership the entertainment division may have been shuttered.

Google is an example of a conglomerate that went that way for a different
purpose. They were in competition with Baidu, Bing, and Facebook for search
revenue and they wanted to better hilight just how well they were doing. So
they form Alphabet so they can better show just how much they spend on moon
shots and at the same time show just how profitable their advertising revenue
is.

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jldugger
I figure Mayer was brought on to do one thing: sell the firm, at the best
possible price.

The Alibaba stake serves as a barrier against hostile takeovers (21B is a lot
of capital), but when the firm really does need a buyer, they don't have one.
Presumably Mayer's goal is to attract a bid from either Google or Microsoft.
She has contacts within Google, and should have a decent understanding of how
the firm values acquisitions. Hence the layoffs, constructive dismissal of
remote workers, the Firefox bid, and such.

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xlayn
I have a question about this article and in general about every article in the
lines of

    
    
      -how to save X
      -what was the problem of Y
      -what should XY focus to fix the problem
    

How is it possible for the poster (say a blogger or a more pro journalist) to
be able to pinpoint a problem, a solution or to offer a plan to follow to get
X afloat?

I mean if every one knows how is it that X still cannot get afloat, they could
be hired to fix the solution but this is the case under which Marissa in this
case were hired right?

Or are this articles baseless most of the time?

~~~
throwaway_exer
Ex-employees and Silicon Valley insiders often do have valuable insight,
including foresight.

Boards generally hire a CEO to sort out the issues rather than "crowd-
sourcing", so even informed opinion is not used.

Marissa was a better choice than the previous bozos, but still a bozo -
somebody who only had one job since uni, dated the founder of Google, and
never was a CxO in a public company. Shame on the Yahoo board, yet again.

In other words, not a businessperson.

~~~
yuhong
I really wish the restrictions can be reduced or removed so @pmarca etc can
tweet more on the companies of which they are on the board of. Same for the
CEOs itself, and CEOs and other executives should be allowed to tweet at board
members and vice versa.

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alpb
Off-topic: It's fascinating this was written by a medical student who writes
code in his free time.

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pm24601
It is so stupid that we have this concept that managers should maximize
shareholder value as if they are the only stakeholders in a company.

Really and truly what did the current shareholders do for YHOO on a daily
ongoing basis?

The current shareholders did not invest any money in YHOO - they bought their
shares from 3rd parties (YHOO did not get any of that money )

The current shareholders are not helping make YHOO better in anyway - arguably
shareholders in any public company are just making management's job harder to
think long-term and strategically.

This concept of "maximize share price" as the true role of management has lead
to financial engineering of fiscal reporting, and then subsequent earnings
restatements.

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free2rhyme214
Build something people want. When was the last time Yahoo did that?

I briefly used Yahoo Weather until they introduced huge ads and then deleted
it. Prior to that I used Flickr and Yahoo Mail in 2004/2005.

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yuhong
This is a good reason to look at fixing corporate taxation, I think.

