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Marissa Mayer's Reinvention of Yahoo! Stumbles
schnell writes The New York Times Magazine has an in-depth profile of Marissa Mayer's time at the helm of Yahoo!, detailing her bold plans to reinvent the company and spark a Jobs-ian turnaround through building great new products. But some investors are saying that her product focus (to the point of micromanaging) hasn't generated results, and that the company should give up on trying to create the next iPod, merge with AOL to cut costs and focus on the unglamorous core business that it has. Is it time for Yahoo! to "grow up" and set its sights lower?
Analysts are essentially idiots. She has proven herself in the past more than any of them have.
Give her time.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
I didn't realize...
People who don't make products have no clue how long it takes to make a product. Their attention span is always shorter. This is an example of someone complaining because their attention span is shorter than the development cycle.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I didn't know Yahoo was trying to create some new hardware device... any details about this device?
Sounds like a plan.
Products are for suckers.
They should focus on social clouds for wearable augmented reality drones.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You can post all day on Slashdot, but that isn't like putting your professional life on the line and giving it a go.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Oi...
To fold up the business, I'll say it again there's no future for Yahoo, it's amazing to me it's even around any longer.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Unless the man in question is Putin or Chuck Norris there's little he could do for Yahoo!.
Thoughts about that, from 4 years ago.
Yahoo missed the boat about 10 years ago. It can't even do web email properly anymore. I have a Yahoo throwaway account, and the system is so broken that I rarely check in on it. It's right up there with AOL; it shouldn't have survived Y2K, but somehow it is still here, twitching and gasping
Marissa Mayer may or may not be very capable, but it hardly matters. Trying to get Yahoo to compete in online services and products in this day and age, starting from where Yahoo stagnated in the late 1990s, ain't going to happen. Frankly I think the best use of her time would be to start folding up the tables and chairs, turn off the lights, close up shop and sell off the company.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
...merge with AOL to cut costs and focus on the unglamorous core business that it has. Is it time for Yahoo! to "grow up" and set its sights lower?
What exactly is Yahoo's "core business"? Their webdirectory is defunct, search outsourced to Bing, and email largely been eaten by its competitors. I would have thought "settings its sights lower" would have involved winding up the company.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Has she even had enough time? Did they expect her to have a magic wand or twiddle her nose when she was hired? Short-term investors just need to pucker more.
Lamer
If we only provide value through synergies resulting from M&A activity, we will eventually end up with one large company spanning the entire state and will have the perfect example of communism :)
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
It can be done. Yahoo has the resources and man power to get there but micro managing was mentioned and that's a key problem right there. I have worked with micro managing managers and I have worked with well informed managers who keep abreast of things and is course I have worked with bad managers. Since I have begun managing myself I have seen great results and I DO NOT micro manage. The best managers I have ever had which have lead me to how I manage now are involved and aware and make key management decisions but they do not micro manage and that was key. I do not micro manage and I have seen steady and excellent growth in our business due to how I operate and how the best managers before me operated has lead me down that path. You take micro managers and they are persistent firm of stress in the workplace. They are invasive and cumbersome. On the other hand I have had managers that are the opposite end of the spectrum where they were not involved enough and/or didn't understand the decisions as best as they should have. They lead to very poor management decisions. A good manager not only knows what is best but knows where to ask and where to trust and speaking of trust you need to know your team well so that you can effectively trust their decisions.
What Yahoo needs is an idea (simple, to the point, effective, new, user worthy)
followed by an execution.
- Not 50 things. 1 to 3, done well. That's how all of the few mega-successful companies got to where they are now.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Oh, that Stumbles. For a moment I thought Stumbles was yet another product with a dumb name.
Mergers with big companies are almost always disasters. Analysts are idiots. They just want a short term cash out, the long term company success be damned.
A lot of us wrote Yahoo off when they got in bed with Microsoft. Bye bye, Yahoo.
It some ways, I think Mayer's is a great fit for the job. But in others, well, the NYTImes article painted a very unfavorable picture of her ability to hire or manage compensation policy. The other problem is that, as TFA article points out, the core Yahoo business has shrunk to a 5-10 billion dollar company in a mature industry and zero prospects for rapid growth. Yet she was hired wave a magic "reinvent" wand and return the company to 100 billion dollar glory -- that is not a problem with Mayer, but the Board.
The only changes I've noticed in my Yahoo! stuff since Mayer took over is that they started sending a daily "stories" email to all my Yahoo! accounts (which I promptly turned off). If ramping up a daily headlines email was a key component of strategy.... yeesh... this is 2014 not 1995
Women who can, do. Women who can't become feminists.
or she is intentionally fucking up Yahoo!
I think it's the latter.
But... she made all of the telecommuters return to offices or be fired, so surely all problems are solved, because those were the issues and not fucking executives and management!
Men who can, do. Men who can't, blame women, feminists, people of color, H1Bs, and pretty much anyone but themselves.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Just spin Tumblr back out and sell the rest to AOL.
It looks as if Marissa Mayer's micromanagement style might've backfired. For one, she probably killed moral for the people that enjoyed the perk of working from home. Her failure will be an ultimate win for Yahoo. Micromanagement NEVER works!
I think that "some investors" is really one guy who owns a big chunk of AOL and wants Yahoo to take that turd off his hands.
No, men who can't make up cartoon-quality villains they like to complain about. You know, sort of like you just did. Badly. So, I guess that makes you a man who can't, right?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
So still better than a feminist.
If Yahoo wants to be relevant, they should show people like me how Yahoo matters. Right now, I can't think of any Yahoo products I use even once a year, and this is not new. It goes back years like this.
Possibly the only thing I "use" at all is email through my ISP: they outsourced it to Yahoomail, but I don't actually USE it; I have GMAIL POP it for me and never actually touch the Yahoo interface -which is an ancient address I never actually use so it's not like I even care really. If GMAIL didn't let me handle it, that account would sit for years untouched. Irrelevant.
Anyway, Yahoo, why should I care? How would my life be better if I used Yahoo stuff to do what I manage just fine without? I don't really see it. More importantly, I don't feel like I NEED Yahoo. And what Yahoo needs is people like me to feel like they MUST HAVE YAHOO, and that is exactly what I don't feel.
Shrug
Sig for hire.
Given that the criteria I listed for "men who can't" have nothing to do with the criteria you used, your comment doesn't really make sense. But, what the heck, I feel charitable - please go ahead and feel like you told me off most righteously.
And, by the way - the "cartoon-quality villains" I "made up"? Read any story on slashdot that talks about women in tech or minorities in tech and tell me people exactly like the ones I used as examples of "men who can't" don't exist.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Smell my vagina!
In statistics we have the Bell Curve. It has two tails and a hump.
Executives like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates represent the leading tail; par excellence.
But the *majority* of executives have to land in the hump and the trailing tail: ergo, "the suck."
Combine that with the astronomical pay these individuals get to be the best of the best...
Mayer is firmly in "the suck." From a PR standpoint alone Yahoo board may likely dump her.
You can't blame her; she didn't hire herself. She just did the best she could with the tools she had. Which by market measurements, hasn't been good enough.
I'm guessing Yahoo Small Business is how they'd like to make money, but it's a bit of a legacy monster. Certainly very hard to get a customer out of and onto a different platform. Comcast Small Biz is similar confusing mess of intersecting control panels (maybe the same software?). A few other companies run the same game, getting business clients locked in complex setups, but I'm not sure it's even intentional with these players on the bottom end of the business hosting market.
On a similar note I called Network Solutions today to get a better domain renewal price, and the customer rep told me domain reg was no longer its main business and we should consider switching to another company if we did not want any other services. It's now Network Solutions,a "web-dot-com" company. They do still offer a $10 panic price though if you click for your transfer authorization code.
Yahoo (and AOL) have users that use them as a start page. I know quite a few (email, stocks, weather, news). They should make these better with more but less intrusive adverts. Maybe they could keep their niche. Growth? How about not going broke? If they want growth in their current model they will have to compete with Gmail. Do they even have a room with 5 people in it and a whiteboard? Leave them in there for 2 weeks. They will have the answer. The question? How can we exploit our web portal business model without making things worse. SPOILER: The Windows 8 start menu does all this crap for you without opening a web browser.
Unless the man in question is Putin or Chuck Norris there's little he could do for Yahoo!.
Yahoo may pass the total value of the Russian stock market soon, if trends continue. Only Chuck can save Yahoo now.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You comment reads like the Chewbacca defense.
thesandtiger? thesandnigger more likely!
You can still get the older version of Yahoo Stumbles here:
http://www.oldversion.com/
I'm sure you were referring to the boatloads of white knights defending said groups, dogmatically, out of desire to feel like the heroes they are not, regardless of the evidence presented.
Chuck Norris blows bubbles with beef jerky.
They essentially destroyed flickr interfacing with my choice of older browser and xp. That was a good place to see the world virtually, vicariously through the inhabitants around the planet.. BUT NOT ANYMORE.. forcing my hand to upgrade or screw you.
You corporate dodoggers can't leave anything alone. You have to keep fucking with everything.
I would not call myself a fan of Meyer, and her use of her relationship with Page to screw over her contemporaries (read this book) has really left a bad taste in my mouth. However this article reads like a hit piece. It looks like some activist investors are trying to get her to do things she does not want to do (the article suggests returning the money back to shareholders and firing all the engineers). They are attacking her personally and that stinks.
I'm sure you were referring to the boatloads of white knights defending said groups, dogmatically, out of desire to feel like the heroes they are not, regardless of the evidence presented.
I've noticed that "white knight" is generally asshole-speak for guys who call out other guys for being assholes.
Oh yeah, Yahoo! are the lot who messed up flickr. Do we blame her for that?
She was loathed at Google. She was lazy. She kept crap office hours. She held the disdain of most engineers. And she was untouchable because of who she was sleeping with.
She was chosen for Yahoo **BECAUSE** of sexism, not despite it. She was chosen because: vagina. She was a young, blonde attractive woman who came from Google. That was solid gold in the mind of those who were seeking "change".
Anyone who had worked with her at Google knew that she would do exactly the following:
1) Fire senior management who posed a threat.
2) Firewall herself with "yes" people who supported her.
3) Go on a publicity rampage which focused more on "Marissa" than her company.
4) Spend like a drunken sailor on batshit crazy acquisitions with little ROI.
5) Avoid criticism by latching on to the "women's rights" agenda and deflecting criticism as being sexist.
And most importantly ...
6) Eventually fail, because failures always fail when the hype machine runs out.
To the white knight who said "give her time", the answer is no. This is business not a fucking pre-school. She blows. She's a crap CEO. She was, is and always will be an INCREDIBLY, PROFOUNDLY TALENTED social climber, and corporate animal. She's got mad, mad skills at navigating through the quagmire of corporate politics. If I could buy stock in Marissa I would. That having been said, I'm short YHOO. She's useless at running companies.
Yes, Yahoo! has officially announced their music playing device called the "Yune".
It's going to come in 7 different shades of purple, and offer an interface based on Yahoo!'s homepage design -- squeezing over 270 links onto the device's homescreen.
Yahoo's CEO, Marissa Mayer apparently designed the Yune at home herself over the weekend using purple Play-Doh, and it will be officially unveiled by her in an upcoming Vogue photoshoot -- where she will be personally modeling the device along with this year's spring collection.
Most of the underlying technology for the Yune was purchased from now-defunct Palm, Inc. in a purchase rumored to be north of $720 Billion -- approved entirely by Mayer. Mayer has refused to comment on the purchase price, but promised that the investment would yield positive results sometime after her salary review with the board of directors.
The Yune will be in stores by next Christmas and as a special promotional offer to increase sales, the Yune is expected to come bundled with an iPhone.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Just use IMAP, and use any client to use gmail..
webapp is just one option.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Give her time? How much more time she need?
Listen, as a woman, I''m all for having more of us at the helm, but dear God Melissa, you tried and failed. You're not helping the cause any...
She's had plenty of time but during her tenure she's done nothing to alter the public perception of what Yahoo! is. Going on a buying spree and gutting a whole slew of products in the process hasn't made a jot of difference to what we, Jane Q and Jon Q Public, see.
Case in point: Yahoo! snatched up John Paris and Astrid, shutting then then popular task app down in the process. Sure he's now a Director of Product Manager Management (Mobile) but what revolutionary mobile steps have Yahoo! made in the mobile market as a result to warrant the purchase?
Yahoo! is a has been, a company with an amazing future behind it. Time to recognize that it snatched defeat from the jaws of... actually , no it was never even that good to begin with...
It looks as if Marissa Mayer's micromanagement style might've backfired. For one, she probably killed moral for the people that enjoyed the perk of working from home. Her failure will be an ultimate win for Yahoo. Micromanagement NEVER works!
"Morale" she probably killed "morale" !
Killing morals is for religeous zealotry, not micromanagers.
However, a micromanaging religeous zealot, *might* also kill morale. I dunno.
Talk about cartoon villains!
You're adorable.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
So much for cancelling that....
I have to wonder about the logic with acquisitions of sites like Astrid, which it owned for only two months before deciding to completely shut them down. It gives the impression that Yahoo! just causes everything it touches to wilt.
A white knight is a socially awkward, virgin loser who is so desperate to impress a chick, any chick, that they go out of their way to try to defend any who might be around, oblivious to the fact that they are annoying everyone more than anyone else.
In fact, white knightism is quite sexist when get down to it. It's an indication that the man-child who is doing it believes that the woman is too weak and/or stupid to defend herself and you don't see too many dudes white knighting other dudes.
Time to give her the rest of the Yahoo money, fire everybody without severance, and shut down
just yesterday got a push from yahoo to install a yahoo chrome extension; sets yahoo to home page, makes yahoo default search, connects to yahoo mail. I'd have installed parts of it, if i didn't have to take the whole package but that didn't seem possible. talk about taking the fight to the enemy's home turf.....
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
From FORBES:
"Riding on the coat tails of that investment, shares of Yahoo (YHOO) might just be one of the better investment choices you could make for the next three years. YHOO shares could easily double as long as the company manages to hold on to some or all of its stake in Alibaba."
This viewpoint is in sharp contrast to the "Yahoo is failed and should be sold now!" None of the rest may matter (e.g. how she manages, what they produce themselves). It may remain only to be seen as to whether she can continue on another's success.
Have you seen the new Yahoo plugin for Chrome. I hate the thing myself but it is ingenious. It turns Chrome into essentially a Yahoo browser. Just by getting a bunch of users who don't know better to install it, they are going to increase their usage of Yahoo.
Micromanagement
Huge Ego
Good with the press
Reduce product portfolio to be more potent
Age out unsuccessful product lines
Focus on providing a good User Experience
When Steve came back to the ailing Apple, he focused the company into 4 product lines (iMac, PowerMac, Powerbook and iBook) when the company got healthier the branched into music, phones, and music players but kept this focus of vision (Generally only 2 products per market one for pro and one for consumer users). Marisa hasn't done anything like that.
Additionally, Yahoo has one of the worst User Experiences in every category they try to compete in, with aggressive advertising (second only to porn rings), and failed content. Their "popularity" remains only because of the barrier to migration for existing users (I can't change my email address ISniffCrazyGlue1982_234552@yahoo.com because everyone knows it!).
- Holy crap, I've got MOD points! Who thought that was a good idea.
Yahoo may pass the total value of the Russian stock market soon, if trends continue. Only Chuck can save Yahoo now.
If this is true (I'll take your word for it), it says more about the meaning of stock market valuations than about Yahoo per se. On one hand we have an established but declining internet advertising company. On the other - all the public companies of a large, heavily industrialized, nuclear armed, multi-continental nation. Really?
Yahoo has an image problem first and foremost. Its bad decisions and scummy practices before Mayer killed the brand as far as I'm concerned. In a Coke and Pepsi world, Yahoo is RC Cola. It's not in the running, an off-brand, and has a ye olde school vibe to it. The more they acquire and destroy, the worse the brand becomes.
religeous
LOL
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw
Casteism
The value of Google passed the value of Russia (remember, these are just the publically traded companies - in the US that about half our economy, dunno for Russia). Russia has almost nothing going for it beyond oil, and the Saudis are using oil prices to fuck Iran sideways right now. The current governmental structure of both Russia and Iran are likely to collapse (Putin is pretty savvy - he may emerge as El Presidente for Life without the pretense of democracy he has now, but chaos one way or another). The ruble is almost certain to collapse, so no one's buying ruble-valued anything, (especially debt) and the risk of public companies in Russia getting either nationalized or simply destroyed by unrest is real.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
We all complain about CEOs that know nothing about the tech their products use.
Now we hear about a CEO that knows tech, and they get dumped on!!
What do we want? ... Or is the dumping just hired Google psychwar mercinaries? 8-P