Google’s Marissa Mayer Tapped as Yahoo’s Chief • Hacker News Board

Re: Google’s Marissa Mayer Tapped as Yahoo’s Chief

#71

Post by jbyers » Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 8:31 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #53

jbyers wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about money or reputation. The risk I see is time and opportunity. She could spend a maddening four years not moving the needle at Yahoo rather than another company or a startup of her own. Four years of punishing travel, endless meetings, unending Wall Street scrutiny. That risk.

Did you seriously just compare the CEO position at Yahoo to a _start-up_? To think the two are even in the same zip code, much less the same ballpark, is just, well it reflects a rather isolated viewpoint, put it that way. Yahoo is a $19B corporation.

Corrected. Poor phrasing on my part. I was suggesting a likely alternative for her would be starting a company, not that Yahoo is anything like a startup.

Re: Google’s Marissa Mayer Tapped as Yahoo’s Chief

#72

Post by smacktoward » Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 8:31 PM UTC

kanamekun wrote: post #37

velodrome wrote: post #21

I think she is very capable of turning Yahoo back into an engineering-focused company. Best of luck.

Was Yahoo ever an engineering-focused company? http://blog.phanfare.com/2009/07/its-official-yahoo-is-a-med...

Yahoo's roots were actually in a rejection of engineering.

For years their primary product was their human-curated directory of Web sites. It was popular because the quality of results returned by the algorithmic search engines of the time (HotBot, Lycos, AltaVista, etc. -- you young 'uns in the crowd may need to look them up) were so poor that you had better odds of finding what you were looking for in Yahoo's directory. The directory left out vast numbers of sites, of course -- that was the cost of trying to manually maintain an index of the Web as it exploded in size. Human curators couldn't keep up with that growth; only software could. But Yahoo bet that software would never be as good as humans at finding the site you were looking for.

Then Google came along and built software that could index the whole web and return relevant results from it, and that knocked the bottom right out of Yahoo's manual-curation approach.

Re: Google’s Marissa Mayer Tapped as Yahoo’s Chief

#73

Post by cft » Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 8:32 PM UTC

That's might be really good news for Google users: I think products that she used to run, like local business reviews on Android maps have a new chance now.

Re: Google’s Marissa Mayer Tapped as Yahoo’s Chief

#74

Post by mmakunas » Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 8:32 PM UTC

jbyers wrote: post #22

uptown wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the risk for her is just stunning" What risk? She's already achieved complete financial security from here time at Google. At Yahoo! she'll be taking the reins of a company that still attracts a massive userbase but is aching for someone with a fresh viewpoint on how to transform the company. Nothing buy potential IMO.

I'm not talking about money or reputation. The risk I see is time and opportunity. She could spend a maddening four years not moving the needle at Yahoo rather than another company or a startup of her own. Four years of punishing travel, endless meetings, unending Wall Street scrutiny. That risk.

True, but Yahoo! has made so many mistakes that she would have to really to screw up (like lie on your resume) for it to hurt her reputation. So that time and opportunity cost is unlikely to ever be a waste. If she fails, well Yahoo! was already a failure, if she succeeds, she's a perceived as savior. Either way, she's a contenter for ceo of any other major internet company going forward.

Re: Google’s Marissa Mayer Tapped as Yahoo’s Chief

#75

Post by zem » Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 8:33 PM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #30

This might be a stupid question, but are there any amazing turnaround stories in the world of large tech companies? If not, is that due to the relative youth of the sector, or something fundamental? I can think of a ton of companies that have faltered, but really none that have made a dramatic turnaround.

give "who says elephants can't dance" a read. it deals with the turnaround of ibm, a company with tremendous institutional inertia.

http://www.amazon.com/Elephants-Dance-Inside-Historic-Turnar...

Re: Google’s Marissa Mayer Tapped as Yahoo’s Chief

#76

Post by r00fus » Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 8:33 PM UTC

pgrote wrote: post #46

Google has to sue Yahoo!, right? She has to be walking away with trade secrets for local and search.

Good luck in California - worker's rights here are pretty hard to attack.

There's a possibility this is a coup by Google - if Yahoo defects to Google search engine it's nearly checkmate for Bing.

Remember, Melissa and Page were once a thang: http://gawker.com/152210/editorial-googles-power-couple

Regardless, I wish the best for Yahoo and Marissa. It would be good to have a strong Yahoo back in the scene - lots of incredible talent there.

Re: Google’s Marissa Mayer Tapped as Yahoo’s Chief

#77

Post by taylorbuley » Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 8:34 PM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #30

This might be a stupid question, but are there any amazing turnaround stories in the world of large tech companies? If not, is that due to the relative youth of the sector, or something fundamental? I can think of a ton of companies that have faltered, but really none that have made a dramatic turnaround.

Intuit hit a period of relative stagnation that Brad Smith has been working to plow through for a while, a period of change marked by the acquisition of Mint and an expansion in the online product suite

SanDisk went in the relative dumper following the memory glut in ~2009 but seems to have been recovering under Mehrotra for about a year now

And a great turn around (and around) story is Seagate, who tanked, went private around 2000, came out and soared mid-2000 and is sort of tanking again even under chairman Stephen Luczo's leadership

Re: Google’s Marissa Mayer Tapped as Yahoo’s Chief

#78

Post by SoftwareMaven » Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 8:35 PM UTC

Yahoo! needs to decide if they are a content company or a technology company. I'm not sure which is the right one, but I think Mayer has shown she can focus and can get other people to focus as well.

Re: Google’s Marissa Mayer Tapped as Yahoo’s Chief

#79

Post by smokinn » Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 8:35 PM UTC

simondlr wrote: post #19

"Ms. Mayer resigned from Google on Monday afternoon by telephone. She starts at Yahoo on Tuesday." - That's quick.

For the rank and file 2 weeks is standard.

For upper level executives as soon as you resign you're escorted out the door by security and you're not allowed to touch anything. The level of access you had was so high that they don't want you learning anything more about the company's plans and want you out asap.

I doubt anyone cared that she resigned by phone.

Re: Google’s Marissa Mayer Tapped as Yahoo’s Chief

#80

Post by awakeasleep » Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 8:36 PM UTC

backspace wrote: post #16

jbyers wrote: post #2

Wow. I am speechless. There is probably no better person on earth to light a user- and product-focused fire under Yahoo. But the risk, the risk for her is just stunning. Huge props to her for making the leap from what must be a very comfortable Google and for the board for finding a stunning candidate to lead the revival of Yahoo. (Edit: my definition of risk is lost time and missed opportunity. She's not going to su…

Actually, there is no risk at all (if you know what's behind the covers). She is stagnating at Google. She had high ranking high influence positions at Google but over the years has been relegated to a position that has little visibility and control, mostly due to her non execution. This is a great opportunity for her to make some serious cash and be the "top dog" in a kennel of average dogs, rather than the opposite…

Could you explain more what you mean by non-execution? I don't travel in circles where I have context for something like that and it sounds interesting.