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Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

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Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#221

Post by prostoalex »

shitgoose wrote: post #206
prostoalex wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "failure" is subjective. What's objective is the stock price, which has grown from $15 to $41 under her management. As bulk of her compensation is locked in stock (negotiated at 2012 prices), it's increasingly hard for her to get compensated less while the stock has tripled in value.

all the stock growth is due to buybacks, so credit goes to Janet, not Marissa.

That may be, and you seem to have a better scoop on the internals.

I was just pointing out that there are very few YHOO investors unhappy with the stock moves 2012-2017 (when benchmarked against S&P 500 or whatever else is commonly accepted metric) compared with, for example, Eric Jackson's war against Terry Semel's (and some directors') compensation package while the stock was in consistent decline https://www.law360.com/articles/26456/advisors-oust-yahoo-di...

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#222

Post by nikcub »

akjainaj wrote: post #34
stanleydrew wrote: post #22

Rather than the inevitable bashing of Marissa that will undoubtedly unfurl on this thread, I'd like to put in a little reminder that we usually celebrate taking on big projects and big risks and that we should commend her for taking on the immense challenge of steadying the Yahoo ship. Yes, she wasn't able to keep the ship from sinking. But I do think she put in a good-faith effort.

I think there is absolutely no indication that anybody, other than Jesus Christ himself descending from the skies mounted on a Harley Davidson in flames, could have saved Yahoo. So, bashing Marissa here would be really, really pointless and sad.

I don't think that is true. In 2012 Yahoo had $5B a year in revenue and was the second most visited property on the web.

When Thompson stepped down the board were given two proposals. The first, revive Yahoo as a premium tech firm lead by someone like Mayer, or 2. admit that Yahoo is now a media co and double down on the verticals where Yahoo is winning - especially those where you can sell premium ads (Finance, Sport)

The board had delusions of grandeur and saw Yahoo's as still being on the same level as Google rather than taking the safer bet and building out the media company.

Being a media company isn't as interesting - but there are a lot of public, medium sized tech media co's out there who get along just fine (and some even have an innovative breakthrough every now and then - like IAC) - and Yahoo, with the later plan, would have been the best of this bunch.

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#223

Post by sebleon »

djsumdog wrote: post #36

I wish there was a real alternative to search. I use DuckDuckGo, but I believe they run on AWS and purchase index data from Yandex et. al. At this point, is it even feasible for anyone to enter the general search market, or has Google simply set the barrier to entry too high? Are there any niche search engines that focus on things Google has either removed or doesn't index? Are there other alternatives besides DDG, S…

Yes, definitely feasible, but challenging.

Some ideas: a) Focus on a niche, like the best search experience for hackers, or best search experience on mobile for high school students, etc.

b) Do content-based ranking, ie. figure out the good-ness of a website based on an automated analysis of what it's about, instead of depending on the link-graph that powers PageRank.

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#224

Post by twblalock »

stanleydrew wrote: post #22

Rather than the inevitable bashing of Marissa that will undoubtedly unfurl on this thread, I'd like to put in a little reminder that we usually celebrate taking on big projects and big risks and that we should commend her for taking on the immense challenge of steadying the Yahoo ship. Yes, she wasn't able to keep the ship from sinking. But I do think she put in a good-faith effort.

> Yes, she wasn't able to keep the ship from sinking. But I do think she put in a good-faith effort.

Are we giving out an A for effort now? CEOs are hired to achieve results. If they fail, it doesn't matter how hard they tried.

Maybe nobody could have prevented the failure of Yahoo. But that doesn't get Mayer off the hook for being a bad CEO -- she made bad decisions, managed to piss off the shareholders, executive team, and rank-and-file employees, hid major security breaches, and did not succeed at any of the things she tried to do. She had no major positive achievements during her entire tenure as CEO.

The best that can realistically be said about her is that she was a bad CEO stuck in an impossible situation.

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#225

Post by stanleydrew »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #220
vidarh wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She also joins a line of failed CEOs at Yahoo . Trying to tie this to her gender would require a lot of evidence to be remotly meaningful. Yahoo has been failing for a decade and a half, largely punctuated by a couple of lucky investments (Google and Alibaba). I also see little evidence of rabid defenses of her. I see some that don't believe she deserves to be crucified for failing to save a company that's been faili…

Here's the thing: If Yahoo was in such dire shape that it couldn't be saved (that seems to be the consensus), it should have been scrapped and sold for parts to maximize shareholder value. Instead Marissa squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on random acquisitions and Katie Couric. In my mind there is nothing noble or defensible about coming into a dire situation, throwing a Hail Mary and then shrugging when it…

> it should have been scrapped and sold for parts to maximize shareholder value.

This is arguably true, but the board decided otherwise, and the board represents the shareholders.

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#226

Post by SkyMarshal »

jinglbox wrote: post #154
prostoalex wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If he had failed he would have wasted years and got nothing in return. Steve Jobs' personal wealth is mainly from Pixar (acquired by Disney) and less from Apple, especially after SEC shut down the goldmine of backdated options http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2007/01/snow...

Yes, and he was already rich from previous money he made in Apple's early days. Just like Marissa Mayer was already rich from Google stock. Neither needed the money at all. Jobs knew that and didn't take any. Mayer for some reason took as much as possible.

Don't blame Marissa for simply accepting what the CEO market was willing to pay her. You and I and every single human being would do no different in her shoes. If you have a problem with it, blame the market for poor judgement in capital allocation.

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#227

Post by stanleydrew »

speaktruth wrote: post #173
stanleydrew wrote: post #22

Rather than the inevitable bashing of Marissa that will undoubtedly unfurl on this thread, I'd like to put in a little reminder that we usually celebrate taking on big projects and big risks and that we should commend her for taking on the immense challenge of steadying the Yahoo ship. Yes, she wasn't able to keep the ship from sinking. But I do think she put in a good-faith effort.

What exactly do you want to accomplish with this comment? Are you really suggesting that we shouldn't analyze and criticize Marissa for failing? Why is it important to you to create a safe space for this CEO? This CEO had a very self-confident attitude but in the end got nothing right. There were no signs progress and development with her and the company. She showed no intrinsic focus and absolutely no creativity. An…

> What exactly do you want to accomplish with this comment?

Reduction in unsubstantiated nasty comments. A better conversation.

> Are you really suggesting that we shouldn't analyze and criticize Marissa for failing?

No, I'm not suggesting that.

> Why is it important to you to create a safe space for this CEO?

I'm not.

> And what are this big risks you are talking about?

Attempting to save a company that appeared at the time to be completely unsaveable.

> If you play in this league you dont get points for "good-faith".

Why not? What's different about that league compared to the one you and I play in?

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#228

Post by colordrops »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #147
idlewords wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She was very well compensated for her time sinking Yahoo. I think this kind of tone policing is unhealthy.

(reasonable) tone policing helps prevent a bunch of armchair quarterbacks with modestly successful programming backgrounds from assuming they have any idea what happens at the executive level of a company like Yahoo.

So we shouldn't criticize anyone that does anything other than programming? I don't get your point.

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#229

Post by bmuon »

folz wrote: post #19

Key takeaways from this filing: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is resigning and the company is changing its name to "Altaba Inc." (The article link was changed from https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNews/status/818589759320637440 at around 50 points)

For the record, this is incorrect. The SEC filing does not indicate she is resigning as CEO. See other comments for explanations about what's actually going on.

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#230

Post by fullshark »

gniv wrote: post #150
pgodzin wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why a "good faith effort" requires taking such a crazy amount of personal risk. Yahoo was willing to pay millions to the exec they thought had the best chance to turn the company around. She should have declined that and and unnecessarily played on Extra Hard mode instead?

That's why the responsibility was on the board to find somebody willing and capable of playing Extra Hard.

The money they paid out to Meyer was not a problem for yahoo, even from a opportunity cost perspective. Deciding to only pay someone willing to work for close to nothing would have been really foolish. Not sure what you are proposing other than like bringing back Jerry Yang.
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