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Google’s Marissa Mayer Tapped as Yahoo’s Chief

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

#181
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk of her reputation. Once you have money, reputation is of the things that keeps you going every day. Right now her reputation is golden.

You overestimate the downside of a reputation hit. The business world loves failures, and in fact it promotes them as people experienced with problems.

One of the biggest things she's going to probably have to do is lay off thousands of people. The business world might love that, but the folks losing their jobs probably won't. Turnaround CEOs take a lot of flak.

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

#182

This will play out much like Armstrong at AOL. Lots of flailing around, another attempt at altering Yahoo's trajectory, and ultimately a further devalued company (not specifically because of anything Mayer will do, but because there's nothing that can stop Yahoo's erosion). At some point the conclusion needs to be reached that the core of Yahoo is the problem. The products that generate the bulk of their sales are at…

Armstrong is a sales guy. Marissa is a product person. Yahoo has the budget and bandwidth to incubate great products. I wouldn't count her out based on a sales guy trying to turn around an ad sales business.

I didn't compare Armstrong to Mayer. I said the end result would be similar.

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

#183

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

I find it so childish, when company escorts an executive out. If CEO have been looking for a job, then all needed files have been copied long time ago. CEO knows it. Company knows it. yet they cannot resist the stupid ritual. giggling.

It's not childish, it's just being responsible. This is generally done for any employee with access to highly sensitive data. They're not going to do any more work for you; why take any risk that they'll do anything damaging after the moment when they tell you they're leaving?

Also, once they've resigned, they're no longer an employee, so for a lot of companies (Google included) they may not be allowed in the sensitive office areas, anyway.

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

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is a once in a century example, good luck with that. And besides, I didn't suggest nothing can be changed at Yahoo. I didn't say that at all. I said it should be blown apart, and the stagnant 1990s products should go. Mayer should put her talents to work on a smaller core where growth can be achieved with new products. Yahoo Finance? Yahoo Sports? Search? Yahoo Mail? 1998 era portals? There's no growth there. S…

They've only stayed somewhat relevant the past decade due to partnerships and these legacy sorts of services. I agree 100% with this. But what are they to do? They aren't Amazon. Try and buy Netflix and battle it out with all the other digital entertainment services?

They're going to have to literally reinvent themselves. Not in the B.S. wishy-washy way they've proclaimed numerous times. But in the balls out risky reinvention where if you fail, the company potentially gets sold for peanuts. They're not going to get anywhere playing it safe at this point.

The smart phone market is still relatively wide open for new, not-yet-thought-of services. Yahoo could throw their focus strongly that direction and try to matter there, betting on the future.

Buying Netflix wouldn't be a terrible idea, they're cheap these days relatively speaking. They could bring a lot of cash to bear behind Netflix, which could be put to use beefing up their streaming selection.

There are a few potential acquisitions they could do to get pointed in the right direction in terms of products relevant to the future. Yelp and Foursquare for example. They need to be able to properly handle services they acquire however, and perhaps Mayer can do a better job of that than their previous leadership. They'd need to do something more like what Google did with YouTube.

Short of making a dramatic change, it's merely a game of milking old assets for cash and slowly fading away.

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

#185
post #84
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, that's exactly how I took it. Oblig car metaphor: That's like saying hey, as an alternative to a free Lamborghini Aventador, you can have an old Pontiac Fiero chassis, and a Chevy 350 with a blown head gasket. If you're really lucky and amazing you might make something worth 1/10th what the Lamborghini is.

Not really a good metaphor. Steve Jobs, Tony Fadell, Elon Musk, Max Levchin, and many more entrepreneurs chose to start a second company rather than take a C level job somewhere else. A better analogy is whether to adapt an off the shelf piece of code to scratch your itch (often a reasonable choice) or to write your own from scratch, clean slate. The latter is much more risky, but that fits a certain personality.

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

#186

Wow, years later, even after her de facto demotion at Google, people still think she's some kind of product genius? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1028615 This is a hilarious situation.

From the description, her behavior reminds me a lot of how Steve Jobs behaved. If you read the biography, Jobs would often contradict himself, he was extremely rude, he would cry at meetings, he would hear an idea and say it was shit, and then the next week propose the exact same idea as his own, etc. I'm not saying she is at all comparable to Steve Jobs, but it sounds like they both know what they want, and don't sp…

I read the biography too and this seems only remotely similar. Anyway, if someone shares some of Steve Jobs' bad traits, that means nothing at all. It's not an indication of a good CEO.

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

#187

Doug Crockford gave a great keynote address at the HTML5 conf this year titled "What would Crockford do?" It was basically not about HTML5 and all about what he'd do if he were Yahoo CEO. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cukFl7gpjE (Crockford takes the stage ~5:09 )

he would fork a Node.js and made Ynode :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HzclYKz4yQ&feature=playe... ~22:40

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

#188

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...

I worked at Yahoo 2003-2005, and back then I used to tell everyone who would listen that a big part of the problem was that the engineering team at Yahoo believed that Yahoo was a technology company, while the product team treated it as a media company.

It was an ongoing tension while Yahoo was still desperately clinging to the fantasy of regaining the search leadership, or at least stopping Google in its tracks - search was to a large extent Yahoo engineering's claim to legitimacy for the idea of a tech focused Yahoo.

Without it, what was left were mainly support functions for a massive content operation, but with a team still to a large extent seeing itself as the core of the company.

Yahoo wasted tremendous amounts trying to do technology for the sake of being a tech company rather than to support revenues; a lot of little fiefdoms in engineering were allowed to exist seemingly because it looked internally like Yahoo was building an impressive technology base, while it often instead was creating tensions in the business and costing ridiculous amounts.

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

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You overestimate the downside of a reputation hit. The business world loves failures, and in fact it promotes them as people experienced with problems.

One of the biggest things she's going to probably have to do is lay off thousands of people. The business world might love that, but the folks losing their jobs probably won't. Turnaround CEOs take a lot of flak.

[deleted]

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

#190

Wow, years later, even after her de facto demotion at Google, people still think she's some kind of product genius? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1028615 This is a hilarious situation.

From the description, her behavior reminds me a lot of how Steve Jobs behaved. If you read the biography, Jobs would often contradict himself, he was extremely rude, he would cry at meetings, he would hear an idea and say it was shit, and then the next week propose the exact same idea as his own, etc. I'm not saying she is at all comparable to Steve Jobs, but it sounds like they both know what they want, and don't sp…

Yes. There's a big difference between a genius who's also a jackass, and someone who thinks they have to be a jackass to be a genius. Jobs was solidly in the first category.
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