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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

#291

Post by mdonahoe »

JPKab wrote: post #153
johnnybgoode wrote: post #67

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.

This is typical Yahoo bullshit. They hire a CEO not for the primary reason of effectiveness or experience, but instead for their perception of effectiveness in the media. Is she an improvement over Bartz? No doubt, because the first time I saw Bartz discussing Yahoo's future several years ago, it was immediately clear to me that they weren't getting out of their tailspin. Is Mayer a genius? I'm sure of it. But from a…

I know almost nothing about her, but these descriptions remind me of this post about Zuckerberg.

"Working with Zuck" http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=339013388919

"Every time Zuck looks at a product, it is as if he does so with fresh eyes... He doesn't care what he said yesterday"

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

#293

Post by ttran4 »

jbyers wrote: post #71
TylerE wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yahoo = Major Leagues , Starting your own start up = Minors

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

#294

Post by bobsy »

Its a great coup for Yahoo.

I think Yahoo's problem is the fact that its search side of things has collapsed. Primarily it was this that made the company so big. Now that search has effectively collapsed they don't appear to have a core product.

This means the question "What does Yahoo! do?" can't really be answered.

If you ask that question of Google. You answer. Google is a search engine which also does...

If you ask that question of Amazon. Amazon is an online store which also does...

With Yahoo? Yahoo.. owns a bunch on interesting products? It has no core and without a big central product to build around it has been hard for successive CEO's to actually drive the company forward.

I have no idea what Mayer can do to resolve this.

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

#295

Post by entropy_ »

Aramgutang wrote: post #280
TylerE wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You would think that at Hacker News, car analogies would not be necessary, since I imagine there is a large proportion of users like myself who have no interest in cars, and have never owned nor intend to own one. I have no idea how a Pontiac Fiero or a Chevy 350 compares to a Lamborghini Aventator without looking it up. All I know is that all three are probably luxury automobiles. I have even less of clue about what…

Well, only the Lamborghini is a luxury car(unless you consider all cars a luxury but that would be a different discussion).

Otherwise, I fully agree with your point. I like cars and had no clue what, exactly, the Pontiac Fiero or the Chevy 350 were as I'm not American and those are American cars. Around here German(Mercedes, BMW, Audi, VW) and Japanese(Mazda, Subary, Toyota, ...) cars are much much more common.

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

#296

Post by kamaal »

FrojoS wrote: post #239
temphn wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. With her connections, knowledge and wealth she might be able to build an amazing company from scratch.

Not exactly,

Building a successful company is not a joke even if you have knowledge and connections. Users don't value what and whom you know.

At her level and for all she has done, getting to be the CEO of a billion dollar firm is actually a great deal.

Looking at it from other way around, Her career at Google might have probably come to a halt given the fact that Larry and Sergey are going to be there around for a long time to come. On the other hand, she could not be the CEO of a successful firm- Because such stints demand prior experience.

In short the change she got now is because, the company is currently a underdog. No big CEO who is already on a wave of success will take up that kind of a job. She needs the company because she gets to be the CEO and nobody else would offer her the same position.

In many ways this is a no brainer.

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

#297

Post by waterlesscloud »

unavoidable wrote: post #219
wavephorm wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very curious what goes in those Board of Directors meetings. Does everyone just sit around asking eachother "What the fuck does this company do, and how are we still in business?" Seriously, what does Yahoo do? I don't know, because I haven't been their website since the 1990's. They obviously don't make software or hardware products, because I don't own any and have never paid for any of their products. I have…

Yahoo has some good niche products that are doing relatively well compared to the rest of the company (fantasy sports is one, Flickr is another). To survive they probably need to do more of those and figure out how to specialize and monetize the products that aren't stagnating.

Yep. I only go there for Flickr and March Madness. Flickr could use some innovation, but it does its core mission well enough. March Madness is a simple task done well.

Used to be on a couple of private mailing lists through their groups, but those have both moved to private google groups over the years.

You know what I'd honestly like to see them do? Compete with Google, head on. I think search and ads are both stagnant markets compared to what they should be. I would absolutely love to see her knock Google out of its complacency and get those worlds moving forward again.

She could pull the talent together to do it, I think, if she was bold enough.

The problem is I'm not sure she's bold enough. But Yahoo absolutely requires gigantic boldness. It's the main quality they need at the top, honestly.

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

#298

Post by mjwalshe »

Aramgutang wrote: post #280
TylerE wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You would think that at Hacker News, car analogies would not be necessary, since I imagine there is a large proportion of users like myself who have no interest in cars, and have never owned nor intend to own one. I have no idea how a Pontiac Fiero or a Chevy 350 compares to a Lamborghini Aventator without looking it up. All I know is that all three are probably luxury automobiles. I have even less of clue about what…

I thought HN had a large preponderence of "engineers" (or at least they claim to be) I would have expected almost 100% of us sould have enough knowledge to understand the analogy.

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

#299

Post by pwaring »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #31
richardv wrote: post #12

Can someone explain how she is able to do this? Set aside the boldness of the move, but if anyone ever should be put on some kind of "garden leave" or some kind of non-compete it would be a person moving from a prominent position in Google to become CEO of Yahoo? Anyway, that aside. One thing that I hope that comes from this, is bringing some of the same Google-quality-developer-friendly-ethos to Yahoo. Dispite consu…

Sure, there isn't really an enforceable non-compete in California, its one of the things that makes Silicon Valley, well Silicon Valley. Second there is a sort of hubris around 'the best revenge is beating them at their own game.' I know of at least two founder/co-founder pairs that split over different ideas about how the vision should go and rather than try to sue the other out of existence, the sense of invulnerab…

Even if non-competes are enforceable, sometimes it will make more sense for a company to let an employee go straightaway anyway, rather than having them hang around twiddling their thumbs with no motivation.

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

#300

Post by cookiecaper »

tjmc wrote: post #207
azylman wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's a lot of reputation risk for her, here... I'm pretty sure that if Yahoo continues it's current course, the majority reaction will be "Well, Yahoo was a sinking ship anyway, there's not a lot she could have done" but if Yahoo makes a comeback she'll be hailed as a miracle worker.

Don't be so sure. Nokia was a sinking ship before Elop joined and now he's wearing most of the blame. Sure, he could have hitched Nokia's wagon to Android instead. But given that Google own competitor Motorola and are selling the killer Nexus 7 at no margin, they aren't exactly an ideal partner either.

Elop scrapped everything Nokia had dumped years of R&D into and turned the company into Microsoft's (Elop's former employer) puppet. Nokia could have made an instant comeback if they had just built a few semi-decent Android phones, but they are now locked in to Windows. Elop's case is atypical.
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