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.

Comments

Say hello

[ArchieBunker]

To the golden parachute.

Re:Say hello

[grasshoppa]

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.

Re:Say hello

[alvinrod]

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.

Re:Say hello

[Muckluck]

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.

Re:Say hello

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re:Say hello

[sjritt00]

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.

Re:Say hello

[sootman]

> 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.

Re:Say hello

[Chris Mattern]

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.

Will tank company for food...and $200M

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

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

What a great country we live in

[Lucas123]

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

Re:What a great country we live in

[alvinrod]

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.

Hey - I hear ...

[Hentai007]

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!

Re:Hey - I hear ...

[slashdice]

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

$29 Billion

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:$29 Billion

[Anonymous Coward]

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.