I still remember when some were attempting to portray Mayers' demotion from the exec ranks at Google as sexism. In reality, Google had probably already recognized certain issues in her managerial style.
Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report
71–80 of 155 posts
Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Haha! Terry Semel is where the "Yahoo is a media company" thing began. http://www.zdnet.com/article/can-terry-semel-yahoo/ http://www.wired.com/2007/02/yahoo-3/ I'm still puzzled by Yahoo's hiring Semel, more than any other executive mentioned in this thread. (e.g. hiring Fiorina for HP made sense at the time).
He was from hollywood, right? No "tech" experience? In some ways he was right. A lot of "tech companies" are media companies now. Was he ahead of his time? A poor exec?
Jerry Yang sought out Semel. Blame Jerry.
Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
He was from hollywood, right? No "tech" experience? In some ways he was right. A lot of "tech companies" are media companies now. Was he ahead of his time? A poor exec?
Yes on the two questions, but for as to exactly why the idea failed, I don't know. I'm an outsider to Yahoo, maybe someone who was there at the time has more perspective. [1] I just remember thinking at the time they hired him (and still think): "I use Yahoo for products like Groups, Mail, Messenger, and so on, why are they hiring the guy who greenlit Batman?" [1] - Another article discussing the topic in the meantim…
It was Jerry's idea that tech was becoming immaterial and that the web would be just another media conduit. Terry was approached based on this. It was a mistake.
Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report
#74Its taken them a while, all their peers except for Amazon have essential gone to the dust. If Geocities had been bought by say Google instead of Yahoo I could have easily flipped my options into my own startup. However dot bomb hit so hard instead of wealth I was left holding a huge capital gains tax bill that forced me into 10 solid years of hardcore poverty as most of my income was confiscated to pay off the debt.…
Ugh. The era before amt credits was bleak.
Yup. A lot of Yahoo's impaled themselves on "exercise and hold". "Same day sale" ended up being less risky.
Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report
#75Has the valley ever seen a more hyped, yet disappointing hire than Mayer?
I don't know about hyped, but Carol Bartz (also at Yahoo) was the most disappointing. She single-handedly killed Yahoo faster than anyone else. Compared to her, Mayer is a genius.
True. Funny how the biggest contenders for "most disappointing" on this thread are all former Yahoo CEO's. Mayer, Bartz, Semel.
Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are very few pure-play software companies. Microsoft is simply alone in its class as a large, pure-play, shrinkwrap software company. Adobe might come close. IBM, Oracle, SAS, PWC, Deloitte, McKinsey, PeopleSoft, and many other firms bundled software with at the very least consulting services. IBM, along with Sun, HP, Digital, and other vendors sold (or leased) both hardware and software, along with consulting…
I would have used Microsoft as an example of a former software company that has started banking on hardware (Xbox, Surface, Nokia)
Aren't those products loss leaders for the purpose of eventually making money off of software (games fall in this category)/consulting services?
Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report
#77Has there ever been a successful turnaround of a software company of Yahoo's scale? Mayer has been tech news' pinata for over a year now, but the company was sliding before she was even hired. Looking through a list of dead Yahoo services, it reads as an obituary of region specific social networking sites and forgettable web services[1]. Social sites are notoriously fickle, and boosting one to popularity is somewhat…
> Imagine if Google's last product was Docs. No Android, no Doubleclick, no Street View, no autocomplete in search, no Chrome. Android, DoubleClick, Google Maps (Where 2, ZipDash), Google Earth (Keyhole), and Google Docs (Writely, 2Web, Tonic, DocVerse, Quickoffice) were built of acquisitions, not new Google products. Chrome, too, in a sense (WebKit). Thought experiment: what if Yahoo ! , not Google, had acquired all…
Even Docs was acquired https://techcrunch.com/2006/03/09/writely-confirms-google-ac...
Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report
#78Whatever the price will be, it won't be the $44.6 billion MS offered back in the days. Shareholders are probably furious at Yang for turning that offer down.
Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are very few pure-play software companies. Microsoft is simply alone in its class as a large, pure-play, shrinkwrap software company. Adobe might come close. IBM, Oracle, SAS, PWC, Deloitte, McKinsey, PeopleSoft, and many other firms bundled software with at the very least consulting services. IBM, along with Sun, HP, Digital, and other vendors sold (or leased) both hardware and software, along with consulting…
I would have used Microsoft as an example of a former software company that has started banking on hardware (Xbox, Surface, Nokia)
AFAIK the vast bulk of Microsoft's revenue continues to come from software: OS, Office, and Server products. I've not seen a breakdown for some time.
Microsoft have been trying to get out of this for quite some time. Back when I worked for a very large revolving credit transactions processor, the stated goal was to get into the online payments game (this nearly 20 years ago now). Microsoft Passport was among the products aimed at this effort, which ultimately failed, attributed by many at the time with the lack of trust any other business had at getting in bed with Microsoft standing on their revenue stream.
Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report
#80Has there ever been a successful turnaround of a software company of Yahoo's scale? Mayer has been tech news' pinata for over a year now, but the company was sliding before she was even hired. Looking through a list of dead Yahoo services, it reads as an obituary of region specific social networking sites and forgettable web services[1]. Social sites are notoriously fickle, and boosting one to popularity is somewhat…
Does Redhat count?
Red Hat has been consistently successful since it's been a company of any appreciable scale so it's not an example of a turnaround of a (moderately) big software company.