No amount of celebrity CEO newspaper pieces will change the fact that Yahoo's has:
- no valuable proprietary technology
- no network effects with users
- no supply chain or scale/cost advantages; and
- a brand which is of waning value.
I'm still not sure why they sold their stake in Alibaba Group. In addition to Alibaba itself, the company has some great Chinese e-commerce assets in the form of Taobao and Tmall, and Yahoo could have been a great partner for a westward expansion. Maybe I'm being too ambitious here but I think that was probably the clearest shot they had at doing something which was sustainably profitable. Probably already out of Marissa's hands by the time she took over though.
My impression was that they were pressured into selling off their shares of Alibaba in order to generate cash to buy off some activist shareholders with either a dividend or share buyback. Marissa then reconsidered after taking the helm, and they are now in a holding pattern.
Precisely. When it comes to their search engine, Yahoo has a brand problem. They let Google take the lead, and now everyone says "let me google this". Nobody says "let me yahoo this". That's all. No matter how good Yahoo's search engine is, people aren't using it. They are not synonymous with search anymore.
Yahoo slept through the mobile revolution - everyone has a mobile OS, except for them.
Yahoo needs to get over this stigma and start working on other shit, just like Google does (self-driving cars, amazing ISP, google glass, biotech).
I disagree jval. Yahoo still has heavy proprietary tech in its ad systems such as Right Media, and they still are one of the best web media properties in the world as recognized by advertisers and advertising agencies responsible for spending billions in ad dollars (most tech geeks are not aware of Yahoo's heavy role in ad tech).
If Marissa can bring parts of Google's hard driving culture to this company, it will do well.
She's already recruiting some great people, such as veteran De Castro and young gun Robbie Stein (who used to be product manager on Google's Ad Exchange) and his Stamped team.
If she can hold on to the reigns and keep this pace of change for at least another 12 months, I think the future is bright for Yahoo.
No amount of celebrity CEO newspaper pieces will change the fact that Yahoo's has: - no valuable proprietary technology - no network effects with users - no supply chain or scale/cost advantages; and - a brand which is of waning value.
I'm still not sure why they sold their stake in Alibaba Group. In addition to Alibaba itself, the company has some great Chinese e-commerce assets in the form of Taobao and Tmall, and Yahoo could have been a great partner for a westward expansion. Maybe I'm being too ambitious here but I think that was probably the clearest shot they had at doing something which was sustainably profitable. Probably already out of Marissa's hands by the time she took over though.