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Verizon Closes $4.5B Acquisition of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer Resigns (techcrunch.com)

Posted by msmash on from the end-of-an-era dept.

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.

23 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Say hello by ArchieBunker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To the golden parachute.

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    1. Re:Say hello by grasshoppa · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Normally I'd suspect that as well, however the world of CEOs runs by a different set of rules.

      So probably nothing would change. How many countless companies have we watched driven into the ground by incompetent CEOs only to watch them land safely at another company only to repeat the process. Gender doesn't seem to have anything to do with it.

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    2. Re:Say hello by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I think that in order to really want to be a CEO of a big company like that (which you didn't found yourself) you pretty much have to be a sociopath, or pretty close to one in a lot of ways. I think that explains why they just won't quit, because its about the power. The money is just a convenient way of keeping score.

    3. Re:Say hello by Muckluck · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, that is only part of it. It is a sort of balance between three personality traits - the "Dark Triad". From Wikipedia: The dark triad is a subject in psychology that focuses on three personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Use of the term "dark" implies that people possessing these traits have malevolent qualities. Many if not all CEOs tend to have a balance of these qualities. Where they fall within the triangle often helps define their own success and the company's success.

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    4. Re:Say hello by g01d4 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Youth and gender were likely a factor in her hiring. These components were to be integrated with the brand being promoted. It was effectively a band-aid covering what was hoped to be the healing wound of the Yahoo brand. Her competence was on par with her peers and removing her would have been like tearing the band-aid off before the wound had healed. Verizon's changing the wound treatment.

      What I've yet to understand is what unique or special skills these CEOs have that justify their compensation outside articulation combined with excessive ambition.

    5. Re:Say hello by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Jeebus - you're giving them way too much credit. It's simple a simple need for validation that never goes away. MM was a simple nerd as a kid and has just spent her adulthood trying to compensate. Creative - that's hilarious.

    6. Re:Say hello by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      I don't normally ask this, but if she were a dude instead of a passably cute chick, would she have even lasted this long?

      The Yahoo board booted Jerry Yang, but he was arguably worse than Marissa. Yahoo was in decline when she took over. She didn't fix the problems, but she didn't cause them either. By the time she took the reins, I am not sure that Yahoo was fixable.

    7. Re:Say hello by sjritt00 · · Score: 4, Funny

      She'd probably like to retire, but if Verizon was smart (I know, a real stretch) they included a "must compete" clause in her termination contrtact.

    8. Re:Say hello by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      1 in 5 CEOs are Psychopaths Not the murdering kind, of course. But the lack of empathy, the willingness to manipulate, and the self-aggrandizing are big things. Artists are often (but not always) polar opposites of the first two. Oh, and "writing code to be an art" is why a lot of code is a shitshow. Good art is rare. It's why there's so much more of a push towards science. Then the "art" is perfecting the application of science instead of it being 99% "creativity" and just enough science to get code to compile.

    9. Re:Say hello by sootman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > That my friend is the difference between you, and I (the peons) and the
      > CEOs of the world. The driven continue to be driven, not just by money,
      > but by their desire to create, innovate, and sometimes destroy.

      BULL FUCKING SHIT. I *might* believe that for a *second* if they didn't ALSO get paid RIDICULOUS sums, REGARDLESS of their performance. Or did you miss the news that she will walk away with $186 million?

      Show me an America CEO who makes within TWO ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE what the average employee earns and I *might* believe that they're doing it for anything other than the money.

      Think she doesn't like money? Maybe she'll share her newfound wealth with the 2,100 who were laid off last week. $186 million divided by 2,100 = $88,571 per employee.

      Or share some with these people. (Feb 2016)
      Or these people. (April 2015)
      Or these people. (June 2013)

      Don't you fucking DARE tell me that she is more driven by a desire to create or innovate than any of those THOUSANDS of people -- that THEY were only driven by money. Becoming CEO is basically like winning the lottery.

      By the way, she was already worth $540M last week.

      Marissa Mayer
      CEO, Yahoo!
      2017 AMERICA'S SELF-MADE WOMEN NET WORTH â" as of 6/8/17
      $540 M

      Add today's $186M and she's now around $720M. She's three-quarters of a BILLIONAIRE. But she's not driven by money -- just her desire to create and innovate. Gotcha. Too bad for the thousands of shallow, selfish former Yahoo employees who were only driven by money.

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    10. Re:Say hello by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 4, Informative

      He probably is a billionaire. Forbes ranking of the wealthy (which is pretty well trusted) says he is. But he's not as rich as he says he is; he's blasted Forbes for rating his wealth at a fraction of what he claims. Forbes thinks he's worth $3.5 billion (down $200 million, as a matter of fact). Trump claims he's worth over $10 billion. I have yet to hear of anyone serious who believes that.

  2. Will tank company for food...and $200M by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'd be perfectly happy to drive your tech company into the ditch too for a couple hundred million dollars.

    1. Re:Will tank company for food...and $200M by hij · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A better analogy would be she found the pick-up truck in the ditch full of cash, and found someone with an even bigger truck willing to pull it out of the ditch so it could be stripped down for parts. You know, the usual stuff.

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  3. What a great country we live in by Lucas123 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Where you can fail hard, and still get a $23 million ‘golden parachute’ for your effort. /s

    1. Re:What a great country we live in by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The boards of these companies typically aren't any better than the CEOs they select. More often than not if you look at board memberships, the CEO of one company will be on the board of another (or several others), and so on. So why no just pick on of their friends to rake in a bunch of cash for a while, when it's likely that friend will be in a position to do the same for one of them at some point in the future.

      If you wanted a really good CEO you'd find some engineer within the company that knows what the hell the company does and how it actually runs and pay for an MBA so they can speak the business lingo the position requires while being able to make informed decisions about the direction the company should take.

  4. Hey - I hear ... by Hentai007 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Uber might be in the market for a new CEO - And hiring her would be a great way to get rid of the "sexist" image they've cultivated lately! WIN WIN!

    1. Re:Hey - I hear ... by slashdice · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ... and Uber will be dead in 3 years. Triple-Win, FTW.

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  5. Yep by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Interesting

    She's somebody's niece or something. It's nepotism (and the ruling class taking care of their own), not sexism.

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  6. $29 Billion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Under Marissa's tenure, the valuation of Yahoo went from $20 Billion to $49 Billion which is pretty damn impressive for a five year stretch. Why is everyone so anti-Marissa here on Slashdot, saying she ran the company into the ground?

    1. Re:$29 Billion by russotto · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Short memories. Mayer's position is basically that of someone appointed to captain the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. She probably took the job because she wanted "CEO" among her accomplishments, but bringing that ship safely to shore just wasn't going to happen. That she managed to delay the sinking this long is reasonably impressive.

    2. Re:$29 Billion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem everyone points out is she didn't do that. All the rise is due to Jerry Yang's investment in this tiny little Chinese company called Alibaba.

  7. The geology has to be right for this to work by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Funny

    Verizon's plan is to locate a stable granite formation containing old mine tunnels, in which AOL assets can be permanently isolated from the biosphere under a concrete backfill.

  8. At least she raised the stock price by jfdavis668 · · Score: 3, Informative

    She is the only CEO of Yahoo that was able to seriously raise the stock price of the company. The company was on a long, slow decline for most of its existence. She pulled it out of its nose-dive long enough to make it worth buying. Not purchasing Google when they had the chance was their biggest mistake.