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Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

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Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#151
post #131

You need to own and exploit a monopoly in order to grow into a true tech heavyweight. Facebook has social (and all the traffic and user data that comes with it), Microsoft has the OS and utilities, Apple has the OS, hardware, and apps, and Google has search and (tbd) Android apps. Unless you monopolize something of extreme value (user data or a platform), you should focus on just making money, although unfortunately…

I think you're missing the forest from the trees. Monopolies in software are created through excellence.

If Facebook "has social" that's because they were and still are the best social network. Of course, now that they are big, they've got a huge lock-in effect, but that's besides the point. Microsoft "has the OS" (and I might add Office) because Windows really has been the best general purpose, generally available OS. Other attempts had potential, but they either keep failing to be as polished or stable for end-users (desktop Linux), or have not been available for all PCs (Mac OS, OS X), or they didn't survive for long enough (OS/2, BeOS). Not sure what monopoly Apple has, but it's no point in arguing that most of what Apple does is technically excellent and beautifully executed. Google "has search" because they had and still have the best search engine and their search engine is indispensable for most people. People talking about DuckDuckGo never tried doing searches from outside the US. Google also has Android, Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Maps, all of which are excellent.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#152
post #89

Whenever I see a struggling company like this I ask myself the simple question. If the company didn't exist, would there be a need to create it? In the case of Yahoo I think the answer is no. If they disappeared tomorrow there would be no compelling reason for others to try and fill the gap it left behind. Hell, I doubt most people would even noticed they had gone. So they need to build a new business from the dying…

> If the company didn't exist, would there be a need to create it? Should I guess that you were not adult yet when Yahoo! started? When Yahoo! was founded, there was a need for WWW site directory, and Yahoo! filled that vacuum. It was the go to place for finding the sites in your area of interest. Some of the sections of Yahoo! for example: Finance and Sports are still go to places for me and I am sure countless othe…

I've not found a good replacement for Yahoo Finance's free daily historical data.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#153

You can bypass the paywall with this link: http://bit.ly/1XdzZgO (Google search the original URL in quotes in future) Sounds like she's in a tough spot. You're pretty much forced into a situation of focusing on the good numbers when you're a public company or you'll get beaten up by the shareholders and shorts. So it's difficult to shine sunlight on the bad stuff to disinfect because that's not what public investors…

Saying that Google has search wrapped up today is about like saying that BlackBerry had the smartphone market wrapped up in 2007. The space is ripe for upheaval.

Google's lead and "special sauce" seems to be much deeper than that, though. Unless you can think of a way to do better search without AI, how do you compete?

We're not talking about handset A vs. B. The technical and talent lead is much deeper wrt. Google and Machine Learning.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#154
post #9

"Ms. Mayer called a meeting with senior executives in August and asked them to sign a written agreement to stay with the company for at least three more years, according to two people familiar with the meeting." Is such an agreement enforceable? Or is this some meaningless pledge? If you want people to stay, give them a decent financial incentive.

Driven people want purpose and to be part of a team thats making an impact. It's toxic to demand written agreement to stay. The request itself says "Things are so bad that nobody wants to be here. Maybe if we all sign this paper, then at least we're all in the same boat". (Side note: money is among the least effective incentive. Waiting for a large incentive payout just makes the time more miserable.)

Yeah, desperation is not enticing.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#155
post #84

Sometimes, well it actually happens quite often, a company just runs its course and is better off just winding things up and closing shop. IMHO it looks like the likely end game for Yahoo is: - taken private by a Private Equity firm - divest Yahoo Japan and Alibaba - any divisions that aren't making an actual profit, (tumblr, flickr, fantasy sports, etc, will be shopped around and sold if possible, or shuttered if no…

It depends on who is trying to resurrect it: Marissa Meyer or Steve Jobs. Imagine a reality show: Jobs or Musk in 2010 were tasked to turn Yahoo around, and the rules were that they would only have access to Yahoo's internal resources and cash. I would bet with my money buying Yahoo stock that they would reverse the curves.

Why Musk? His companies aren't profitable.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#156
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs could come back from the dead and he would be utterly helpless to revive the abject piece of crap that is Yahoo.

Warren Buffett once wrote: With few exceptions, when a manager with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact. It's not clear to me that Yahoo's business has poor fundamental economics because I don't quite know what business it's in.

> It's not clear to me that Yahoo's business has poor fundamental economics because I don't quite know what business it's in.

Buying, say, tumblr didn't help with that because it's not like a free blogging engine would appear to be a great money spinner. Suggesting you want to make it less R18 then suggests you didn't look too hard at what people use it for.

Similarly, when flickr has a lot of people who are prepared to pay to host photos spattering ads all over it seems like... a lack of understanding of how it works.

flickr makes me particularly sad. The user authentication fuck up was appalling. The ads were moronic. It only needs a couple of minor tweaks, some of which (like albums for groups) to make itself a Facebook alternative on the side.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Yahoo has huge traffic from extremely loyal users who are mostly in the higher income (30+) age range." Is that statement a fact? If so, care to substantiate it. I work for one of the largest companies in the world and we no longer use Yahoo; we use too. Every year in the US, the Superbowl pulls in HUGE dollars in advertisements. I have to plan for this every year and have been doing this for the past 10 years. Arou…

why not just say what company that is?

The OP says "Fortune 5". The candidates are Walmart, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Berkshire Hathaway, and Apple. Which one of those has super bowl ads and uses Akamai? There's your answer.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#158

A genuine question for you. What exactly does Yahoo do? When I think of Google, I think of search. With Amazon, an ecommerce giant for my shopping needs comes to mind. But with Yahoo, nothing comes to mind except all the spams I got when I had their email...

For me, they're: (1) the owner of Flickr, an acquisition they've tried to futz around with, but haven't actually managed to damage too much yet. (True, the site design's become much more heavyweight, but that's a general web design issue) Interestingly, whilst they tried to go ad-only, removing "Pro" accounts, they later reinstated them - but with an oddly tone-deaf press release that trumpeted that account level's a…

> Could such still work?

Effectively it would competing with Reddit, HN, Metafilter, and similar sites where the owners have an army of people curating the web for them, for free. Which makes it a hard ask. Obviously there's a demand because Reddit, HN, MF, etc, exist, but enough to make money off of?

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#159
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was pretty sure someone will make a comment like yours. You didn't disappoint. You want to me to go to 3 different sites for Finance when I can get everything at Yahoo! You want me to go to 4 different sites for Sports when I can get everything at Yahoo! Can you get Bleacher Report articles on ESPN? I will suggest comparing Yahoo! Finance and Sports with the sites you mentioned. You might be surprised that most sit…

I meant each site is as good as yahoo! not that you would have to go to each one, but I don't really care about sports. The finance sites are all drop in replacements and better than yahoo finance. As for sports, if you want the same information but the caveat you seem hung up on is that it must come from different domains, just go to a reddit like aggregator. I get it, you like yahoo. Yahoo does a good job, and I al…

> The finance sites are all drop in replacements and better than yahoo finance.

I completely disagree with that. I tried for over a year to switch from Yahoo to Google for finance and found it completely lacking, despite the nicer UI. The only site that can match Yahoo finance in my opinion is the Motley Fool. I still use both.

Re: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that Google has search wrapped up today is about like saying that BlackBerry had the smartphone market wrapped up in 2007. The space is ripe for upheaval.

Google's lead and "special sauce" seems to be much deeper than that, though. Unless you can think of a way to do better search without AI, how do you compete? We're not talking about handset A vs. B. The technical and talent lead is much deeper wrt. Google and Machine Learning.

That really depends on what the upheaval is. Apple didn't make a better version of a black berry, it made an iPhone. I think Google is probably safe for a while, but it's hard to see seismic shifts coming.
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