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Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

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Re: Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

#111

Post by jacquesm »

_greim_ wrote: post #82
braythwayt wrote: post #79

Maybe instead of beating up on MM, we could look at Yahoo the way we look at Twitter: Yahoo could be great if the world would let Yahoo be Yahoo. But Yahoo being Yahoo would be a smaller company, with smaller, focused business, and happy customers. But it would have a smaller market cap, and today’s investors would take a massive haircut. So they keep plowing ahead trying to be a tech giant. Because they bought tech…

Nice insight. Seems like there's a pattern here, in which high public visibility creates expectations which push a company out of its optimal mode of operation.

This happens all the time when VCs fund companies that they had better stay away from. That said, Yahoo! had potential at the time and actually was a giant (the #1 website in the world for a very long time).

Re: Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

#112

Post by Veratyr »

braythwayt wrote: post #79

Maybe instead of beating up on MM, we could look at Yahoo the way we look at Twitter: Yahoo could be great if the world would let Yahoo be Yahoo. But Yahoo being Yahoo would be a smaller company, with smaller, focused business, and happy customers. But it would have a smaller market cap, and today’s investors would take a massive haircut. So they keep plowing ahead trying to be a tech giant. Because they bought tech…

> Because they bought tech giant shares, and it’s tech giant, or collapse until it’s sold for scrap.

I was under the impression that investors essentially treated Yahoo as a proxy for Alibaba due to their holdings. I'm curious how much investors value Yahoo itself these days.

Re: Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

#113

Post by justin_vanw »

braythwayt wrote: post #79

Maybe instead of beating up on MM, we could look at Yahoo the way we look at Twitter: Yahoo could be great if the world would let Yahoo be Yahoo. But Yahoo being Yahoo would be a smaller company, with smaller, focused business, and happy customers. But it would have a smaller market cap, and today’s investors would take a massive haircut. So they keep plowing ahead trying to be a tech giant. Because they bought tech…

Yahoo being Yahoo means Yahoo driving revenue via bundling spyware, plus a dying fantasy sports site.

The Sun/Oracle Java JRE, Firefox, etc, Yahoo hasn't made money from anything other than tricking low-sophistication users into making Yahoo their home page by installing toolbars and changing browser settings, and they do this by paying to have installers of unrelated but necessary applications do the dirty work. This is all they have had as a business model for 10 years.

Yahoo should die, it's a scammy company surviving by doing things that would lead us to condemn anyone without the pedigreed name. They had dreams that the scammy stuff was just a way to keep the lights on while they restart their search efforts, or their technology driven products, but that's all just a dream, this company has been dead on the inside for 10 years.

Re: Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

#114

Post by elorant »

Yahoo! was great fifteen years ago, now it’s just irrelevant. The world moved on to niche content sites and they were left behind. I can’t think of a single sector where I’d choose them over competition. I’ve heard that their web mail service is stellar but so is Gmail and I’m staying with it. It’s not like they came up with a service that was x10 times better than anything out there, far from it. They have been around since the dawn of the web and haven’t manage to build anything innovative in the last ten years. Where is Yahoo! in the whole social media thing? I mean Google tried their luck with Google+. What did Yahoo! did? They bought Tumblr and didn’t even bother to integrate it with their services.

Yahoo! has to focus on doing one thing and doing it very well. They can’t be both a services and a content shop. It doesn’t work like that. When it comes to content they have to compete with traditional news organizations that have decades of experience on the field. When was the last time you read something interesting and original on Yahoo!? For me, it’s like never. The problem though is that if they had to choose one sector that would mean massive layoffs and that in turn would send the stock way down. So that’s never going to happen, at least not unless reality hits them hard.

I feel kind of sad for them though because for me there was a time that I visited Yahoo! on a daily basis, before Google came-up with a better search algorithm and stormed the web. As with every company that was there from the beginning they hold a special place in my heart. But the reality of the web is that unless you innovate you become obsolete sooner or later.

Re: Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

#115

Post by ceocoder »

Yahoo!'s identity crisis has been going on for at least 6 years, here[1] is then Yahoo! CEO trying to describe "what is Yahoo!" in 2010 . It may have started earlier, but this was the first time I noticed it.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/28/ok-seriously-what-is-yahoo/

Re: Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

#116

Post by justin_vanw »

Veratyr wrote: post #112
braythwayt wrote: post #79

Maybe instead of beating up on MM, we could look at Yahoo the way we look at Twitter: Yahoo could be great if the world would let Yahoo be Yahoo. But Yahoo being Yahoo would be a smaller company, with smaller, focused business, and happy customers. But it would have a smaller market cap, and today’s investors would take a massive haircut. So they keep plowing ahead trying to be a tech giant. Because they bought tech…

> Because they bought tech giant shares, and it’s tech giant, or collapse until it’s sold for scrap. I was under the impression that investors essentially treated Yahoo as a proxy for Alibaba due to their holdings. I'm curious how much investors value Yahoo itself these days.

At one point Yahoo all together was worth less than the combined value of Yahoo Japan and Alibaba. So in those days Yahoo itself was valued as a net liability, I don't know today.

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/10/is-yahoos-core-business-reall...

Re: Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

#117

Post by trimbo »

bane wrote: post #108
lisper wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AFAIK, she did not originate or lead the early direction or kickoff of any of the products she worked on at Google. And how would you know that?

>And how would you know that? short answer: By using google long answer: It's pretty well known outside of Google what product groups she lead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marissa_Mayer "In 2005 she became Vice President of Search Products and User Experience. Mayer held key roles in Google Search, Google Images, Google News, Google Maps, Google Books, Google Product Search, Google Toolbar, iGoogle, and Gmail" We k…

> Let me know if you can think of any she did have founding interest in.

A good manager doesn't have to come up with the idea. Most of the great ideas come from the trenches -- or competitors, frankly (Adwords, meet Overture, Keyhole meet Terraserver and so on). A PM's job is to be an advocate and grow the best ones by finding the resources, trying and discarding ideas that don't work.

The PMs that suck are the ones who obsess over pushing their ideas above all others.

Re: Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

#119

Post by rythie »

elorant wrote: post #114

Yahoo! was great fifteen years ago, now it’s just irrelevant. The world moved on to niche content sites and they were left behind. I can’t think of a single sector where I’d choose them over competition. I’ve heard that their web mail service is stellar but so is Gmail and I’m staying with it. It’s not like they came up with a service that was x10 times better than anything out there, far from it. They have been arou…

Flickr is still the go to site for photographers, there are other sites, but Flickr is the most popular.

However, Adverts on login page suck though and for those that don't pay they have adverts inserted that look exactly like photos. I don't see the later normally, but it's a pretty awful way to make money (though Google search and Facebook advertising are equally bad).

Re: Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

#120

Post by dang »

agumonkey wrote: post #100
dang wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently learned that Mel Conway (the same Conway) did some of the earliest work on recursive descent parsers. http://www.melconway.com/Home/Inventor.html Appel's compiler book credits him with the invention, but Cooper and Torczon cite one earlier reference. Edit: poking around that site reveals an article which seems like it deserves a thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11273710 .

Slightly related, I learned today that the 4-color theorem Appel is Compiler Appel's father. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem#Proof_by_co... https://twitter.com/agumonkey/status/708681730278989824 (all this after reading that prolog primer http://www.cpp.edu/~jrfisher/www/prolog_tutorial/pt_framer.h... )

Fascinating!
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