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Google's Marissa Mayer Becomes Yahoo! CEO
D H NG writes "Marissa Mayer, Google's employee #20 and Vice President of Local, has been appointed CEO of Yahoo. She was Google's public face for years, famously being responsible for the look and feel of Google's most popular products: the famously unadorned white search homepage, Gmail, Google News and Google Images. Mayer resigned from Google Monday afternoon and will begin her new job on Tuesday."
Huh?
I'm confused. I guess that I didn't understand right, I thought that we users were the product, and the customers were the advertising agencies and companies that pay Google to deliver our views/time to them...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
She spent her time working at a company that has a good product and a pretty solid streak of good years.
Yahoo is stuck with lots of products that nobody wants anymore and flailing to find what to cut and what to keep. Those kinds of decisions are much more difficult that riding a rocket like Google's last decade. CEOs who turn around failing companies are not pragmatic technologists or engineers, but either cutthroats or visionaries with a killer instinct.
I'm curious if she had a non-compete clause in her contract, and how it will all work out if she does. Any Google employees who know the details on their typical contracts?
That is the best thing to happen to Yahoo in a long time. She's significantly more competent than the previous CEO, and has more knowledge of tech companies than the one before that. She has some serious challenges, but she could change the worst parts of culture at Yahoo (which is currently driving away top talent).
She did a couple interviews lately, if you want to know more about her.
Bio and more links here.
Um, the definition of your 'customer' is someone who gives you money. Did you remember to pay the Google bill this month? Didn't think so.
Yahoo! simply has nowhere to go. They've been out innovated in everything and their original purpose, human indexed websites, is no longer relevant to the world. Anything Yahoo! does, Google or Microsoft can do better.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
I would kindly refer everyone here to geekfeminism.org since all those sexist comments are awful, you should be better than that.
We should be viewed as the customers not a product.
Not if they wish to make money.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
No, no, no... it's gotta be all about me! Every company exists to serve me, and me alone! If those big companies aren't pleasing me, they're wrong and evil!
</sarcasm>
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Nobody expects Yahoo to return to its glory years, but if you can right the ship and steer it to stability, consider it a success. Aim high by shooting low.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Lots of the press is focused on the fact she's a woman CEO - but more important is she's been one of Google's #1 product people since really early on. Hopefully it'll actually make Yahoo focus on product again and get away from the "audience" focus. Larry and Sergei probably not happy campers right now...!
--- Karma monkey, twitter: njyx
If there is no product left you are screwed. Yahoo is not Google either and is less aggressive in marketing and advertising.
What I really see is from the security scandal and many many other problems including spammers taking over, and feature rott, are all a sign of a lack of vision and people just giving a damn about their products. Their products reak, porn spammers even go into the children's chat rooms for crying out loud and spam every 1 minute! I am not talking about a one time thing, but they have been doing that for over 10 years! I quit using Yahoo right around then with chat.
Their IM program is malware ladden and slows down older computers and has people randomly friending and spamming you, again no one gives a shit at Yahoo and I use Digsby for my Yahoo client now.
They could have taken on Google in 2002 with an improved search engine. They could have taken on Skype with improved video as they did have some of it workign and calling in YahooIM 5 years ago at least. They could have got rid of all the porn spammers and made Yahoo chat a must have thing rather than letting AOL and then MSN steal this market.
In comparison Google and even Microsoft quickly fix things and are always at least trying to compete and outdo companies like Skype. No one cares and it is just a boring day job with no passion left. This new CEO needs to excite her employees and fire QA and security people and provide a vision for improvments.
Do this and we the product shall return.
http://saveie6.com/
I'd query that.
Too bad it will return zero results. :)
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Welcome to California.
She has been raising her public profile a lot in the last 12 months so her quitting after a couple lateral "promotions" is not really unexpected.
The surprise is that the Yahoo board did not snag Elop for his ability to build Yahoo's partnership with Microsoft. That would have been typical Yahoo board behavior.
Work bio at MMWD
Without users Google has no "product" to sell.
There is a distinction that can be drawn between "customer" and "consumer." The average Joe might not be Google's primary "customer" but he is their primary "consumer" ... and without consumers Google is out of business.
It's a total logical fallacy to assume that Google doesn't need to treat their consumers right, and only needs to pander to the people who buy their advertising services. Their advertising services are worth nothing without the consumers, and that makes "us" important (no, essential) to Google's bottom line.
An Original Sarlacc, or a Special Edition Sarlacc?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Yep, seems like Google is really starting to drive away its loyal employees like rats from a ship. I guess that's what happens when you start doing evil and putting your advertisers above what should be your actual customers not the product you sell.
I thought that was Yahoo's specialty. I stopped using Yahoo years ago due to the glut of advertising in everything to the point I felt Yahoo was becoming unusable.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Yahoo! simply has nowhere to go. They've been out innovated in everything and their original purpose, human indexed websites, is no longer relevant to the world. Anything Yahoo! does, Google or Microsoft can do better.
The question is .. do they still have enough money and desire to innovate? They could yet dig themselves out of the hole, but it requires getting the company to be a great place to work, attracting brilliant, energetic minds to create. If all Yahoo are is a company of cowering cubicle moles, trying not to be noticed and whacked, there's not much she or anyone can do.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Their IM program is malware ladden and slows down older computers and has people randomly friending and spamming you, again no one gives a shit at Yahoo and I use Digsby for my Yahoo client now.
It's sad, Yahoo Messenger used to be their best product (and their mail was pretty solid, too). I understand they are free, and would be fine with a few ads. But as you said both of them are now completely stuffed with (totally irrelevant at best, borderline sleazy/offensive/phishing/scam at worst) ads. And UI-wise their mail client is now approaching unusable.
I *wanted* to stick with Yahoo, but it was like they were actively trying to drive me away. I'm almost surprised they have not yet figured out which genres of music I hate most and automatically play them in the background when I log in...
In that case, I'll get my Boba Fett costume and make it a party.
I've worked with Marissa before and admire her product focus and attention to detail. She's very sharp. The challenge for her will be working in an environment without the depth of engineering talent that Google has; she has never experienced this in her working life.
Companies exist to serve the public. The profit motive is only a guide.
Just because the social contract isn't written down does not mean it doesn't exist. Many people appear to have forgotten this. Not only are many big companies not serving the public well, they are marginalizing and robbing their own shareholders through huge executive compensation packages, and poor planning that spends their good reputations, their accumulated resources, and their very futures to boost immediate profits and executive bonuses. What kind of idiotic thinking leads to decisions to waste money on huge disinformation campaigns, as Big Oil did when trying to deny Climate Change, and Big Tobacco did when trying to claim nicotine was not addictive? There isn't a single big bank or telecoms company that has a good reputation. The biggest of the entertainment industry have thoroughly dirtied themselves by waging a highhanded, mean spirited, sanctimonious, bullying terror campaign against the entire world, calling us all evil thieving pirates. Many of these executives are parasites, psychopaths, and megalomaniacs, not leaders.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Talk about not properly sanitizing your database input!
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Oh yeah. That's why Google completely pulled out of China over censorship and spying on their users, sending political activists and just normal people talking about forbidden subjects to work camps. Bing and Yahoo were quick to fill evil gap for them.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
They'll definitely miss her distinctive laugh around the hallways I'm sure.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
This woman is brilliant. Maybe she'll find a way. Certainly she won't have any trouble getting the press to show up for her events. Pretty CEO = Lots of clicks, therefore ad views, therefore lots of coverage. So whatever they do she won't have a hard time letting people know about it. She should exploit that as much as possible. Slashdot may as well add an icon of her mug right now.
She should also go over the top with the Community partnership, green energy, great Place to work, human interest type articles. Maybe fly a few columnists out at a time, all the time to bring Yahoo home to the local communities they serve all over the world - have an office dedicated to that. Build the community love.
Sales and process types wind up at the top of corporations after a while, and Yahoo's got more than a few of those. It probably won't take her long to find out which ones are stuffed shirts with empty hats. That part is easy. Finding the right people to sit in those chairs is hard.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If all Yahoo are is a company of cowering cubicle moles, trying not to be noticed and whacked, there's not much she or anyone can do.
I don't know about that. It seems to be working pretty well for IBM.
Until she starts laughing...
Let me give your analogy everything and say unequivocally "YES we're 'lettuce'" ... it does not invalidate my point.
Can the grocery store benefit by selling rotten lettuce ? Can it benefit by stocking less of it despite their "customers" demanding more ? And can it benefit from an attitude of "fuck the farmers who make the lettuce, we're going to spit on them and kick them to the ground because we 'only care about our customers!'" ?
Honestly who cares if we're the product ? Why is that a bad thing ? When we sell our services to an employer we're "the product" (to the same extent that we're "the product" to advertisers. Obviously we're not talking about trading or selling us as human beings in a literal sense). The point is, we choose to use Google for a reason. If they remove that reason or start slacking then we'll be itching for an alternative and a new market opportunity opens up to compete with them. For what it's worth I've already heard of some people who have stopped using Google search, going directly to Wikipedia instead. It might not be a great example but it is an example of choosing "not Google." In fine dining the Filet Mingon might be the product but you better bet your sweet ass the Chef holds that cut of beef on an insanely high pedestal and treats it with ridiculous amounts of respect because doing so is crucial to the restaurant's bottom line.
She was employee #20 at Google. Her estimated wealth is $300 million. I don't think she needs a parachute. She wants a shot at top dog, and that was the one thing Google couldn't give her.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Companies exist to serve the public. The profit motive is only a guide.
By what law or logic is this? Last I knew, a "company" was simply a group of people who have pooled their resources to accomplish a common goal. That goal could be "cure cancer", "promote world peace", or simply (and commonly) "make money", but there's no mandate I've ever encountered that they must serve the public.
In fact, I can think of many companies that explicitly do not serve the public, or do so only indirectly. Holding companies, for example, exist to just own other companies. Defense companies will often only serve governments, which may or may not serve the public interest. Foreign financial companies are often merely vehicles for relocating money for tax purposes.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Ya HOOO....
Yeah, looks like she was pretty hot like 10, 15 years ago.
Just like Yahoo.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You may very well be the person the GP was attempting to parody. "Companies exist to serve me. And you too, of course. But if they don't do what I think is good, they are bad."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I don't understand- if they're smart then they will treat us like product- high quality, specialized product that is well chosen for its particular customer.
I don't find *most* of Google's ads on their own services to be that annoying. They come in the form of text, mostly, and are significantly more relevant to me than ads from other services. I don't like ads, but if I'm going to "pay" for the free services by putting up with ads, I'd rather they be appropriate than for crap that really annoys me.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Here's another pathetic example. Yahoo was the inventor of the DKIM system for cryptographically signing email in 2004. It's a valuable tool for fighting spam. When you get spam from a yahoo or gmail address, you can tell whether or not the return address is forged. If it's not forged, you can complain using a web interface. But within the last year or so, yahoo eliminated that interface, so they're no longer getting the full benefit of the DKIM system that they themselves invented. Here is the URL where the form used to be; it now redirects to a useless help page.
Find free books.
Elop is still very busy driving Nokia into the ground.
Is that Cole's Law?
This could be an interesting choice for many reasons.....if she succeeds with Yahoo.
Many women can't get some jobs because companies are concerned about them getting pregnant and not being there for them. She is due in October. If she pulls off turning Yahoo around she could make a contribution toward ending that kind of discrimination.
She could also help end the stereotype that a cute, blonde, conventionally attractive woman isn't likely to be an effective CEO.
If she succeeds, if not she will fuel to the fire of stereotypes.
I hope she succeeds. Yahoo used to be "the Google" back in the day. Now they seem to be stuck in mediocrity. It would be nice if she could bring some of that Google magic to Yahoo.
Companies exist to serve the public. The profit motive is only a guide.
By what law or logic is this?
Because the people are sovereign. Companies can only exist because the public wills it. If companies are to justly exist, they can only exist to serve the public. If a company exists that does not serve the public interest, either the people will remove it, or the people have been oppressed to the point where they can't.
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