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Verizon Closes $4.5B Acquisition of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer Resigns (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader shares a TechCrunch article: After Yahoo shareholder approval last week, Verizon today announced that it has finally closed its acquisition of Yahoo, which it plans to combine with its AOL assets into a subsidiary called Oath, covering some 50 media brands and 1 billion people globally. It will be led by Tim Armstrong, who was the CEO of AOL before this. As expected, Marissa Mayer, who had been the CEO of Yahoo, has resigned. "Given the inherent changes to Marissa Mayer's role with Yahoo resulting from the closing of the transaction, Mayer has chosen to resign from Yahoo. Verizon wishes Mayer well in her future endeavors," Verizon said in a statement. You can find Marissa in her own words here on Tumblr. It's a long list of the achievements made with her at the helm these last five years, and -- alas -- you will only read of the struggles that Yahoo went through between the lines. The deal, nevertheless, brings to a close the independent life of one of the oldest and most iconic internet brands, arguably the one that led and set the pace for search -- the cornerstone of doing business on the spaghetti-like internet -- at least until Google came along and surpassed Yahoo many times over, and led the company into a number of disastrous and costly attempts to redefine itself, ultimately culminating in the sale we have here today.
There are a few different aspects to your question that I want to expand a little:
1) You're implying that she was completely incompetent, and should have been fired. That's possible. However, I'd also point out that Yahoo was a flailing mess of a company before she took over, and it's not as though there was a clear and easy path to rehabilitate them. Getting purchased by Verizon may have simply been the best play that they had. If so, she got that done.
2) You're implying that being attractive helps you become a CEO (or keep the position once you have it). I think this is a bit of an unfortunate fact of life. People are often judged on superficial things. I think there have been studies indicating that taller men, for example, enjoy more success in politics and in business. There have been studies that indicate people lend more credibility to men with deep voices. People perceive more attractive people as being nicer, smarter, and better in bed. What can you do?
3) You're implying that being a woman helps you become CEO (or keep the position once you get it). That certainly doesn't seem to be the trend. It's not as though there are just tons and tons of female CEOs. Your own post illustrates that female CEOs don't seem to get more respect than their male counterparts. There may be some degree to which people would hesitate to fire a woman because it might "look bad", but ultimately, I doubt that would have much of an effect for very long.
4) There seems to be an assumption that CEOs are generally competent and doing a good job. Therefore, if one CEO is not doing a good job and isn't immediately fired, that person must be an outlier. All I can say is, that doesn't seem to be the case as far as I can tell. I see the insides of a lot of companies, big and small, and a lot of the upper management (including CEOs) frequently make bad decisions without much consequence.