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Yahoo spends $58 million to fire its chief operating officer

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Yahoo spends $58 million to fire its chief operating officer

#31

Post by marincounty »

threeseed wrote: post #11
Theodores wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are forgetting: Marissa redesigned the logo! All by herself!!! Seriously though, what do Yahoo actually do? The mail has gone the way of 'compuserve' in that you don't very often get to see a yahoo address in an email these days. Search was something they just gave up on, then there portal style homepage, does anyone actually go there? They should have stuck with search, it was something that they were reasonably…

Yahoo is the number 4 website in the world with profits of over $300 million per quarter. Do you think Twitter or Amazon should also become a faceless holding company ? http://www.alexa.com/topsites

Yea, it's an old company. It still has more potential. The only people I know who still use it are over 60. I think that's a plus, because although they don't buy toys and food from websites. They still get suckered into sappy website scams--like card companies, and reched malware fixes. (If any non tech-person reads this don't ever download a fix for your slow PC. You would be better off downloading Hiren's boot cd and blindly hitting keys. As to the paid birthday card sites; most of your loved ones find the cards irritating, and just want a simple email from you. I know yu think they are sweet, but honestly--they just want an email. Your kids still love you--know matter what you do though.

Re: Yahoo spends $58 million to fire its chief operating officer

#33

Post by rokhayakebe »

stackcollision wrote: post #23
stingraycharles wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree. I'm currently in Asia and /everyone/ appears to be using a yahoo email. I even created some gmail addresses for them, but it just doesn't appeal to them.

From what I've heard, this is because many Asian countries have a culture of information flashbang. The Yahoo homepage is extremely cluttered and busy, which fits in with what they expect. The Google homepage, in contrast, is just an empty abyss they can't get anything from. Here in the States we seem to value minimalism, which might be one of the reasons people go to Google (aside from it being a great search engine…

Here in the States we seem to value minimalism

What part of America do you live in?

Re: Yahoo spends $58 million to fire its chief operating officer

#34

Post by bedhead »

It's really sad how wildly distorted executive compensation has gotten. The best phrase I heard was "entrepreneurial reward for managerial duty", and I fear it's become all-too-common. My eyes popped out of my head recently when I saw that Coca-Cola (yes, that same drink company that's done just fine for over a hundred years and whose organic growth rate might be 1% if they're lucky) was trying to give management $13 BILLION over the next four years. It's insanity. And when it's not simple pay, it's severance packages that give Fuck-You money to people whose performance provably dreadful. Leo Apotheker made $25 million on his way out the door from HP, after vaporizing over $6 billion in buying a fraudulent company and doing virtually no due diligence. It's madness, pure madness. Executive comp is a bubble, these people aren't worth anything near this much, but I have no idea when it will pop.

Re: Yahoo spends $58 million to fire its chief operating officer

#35

Post by sillysaurus3 »

reustle wrote: post #26
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #3

I've been wondering: How's Marissa Meyer doing as CEO? I haven't heard much about Yahoo recently except that they acquired some companies in order to get talent in the mobile space. It's been about 1.75 years since she became CEO. Is that enough time for a non-Steve Jobs CEO to change the trajectory of a company?

> for a non-Steve Jobs CEO What does that even mean?

Just that Jobs turned a company from the brink of failure to the most successful tech company pretty quickly. But since Apple is an outlier, I was interested in hearing about any other examples of CEOs who have caused big improvements in short amounts of time.

Re: Yahoo spends $58 million to fire its chief operating officer

#36

Post by chrisgd »

bedhead wrote: post #34

It's really sad how wildly distorted executive compensation has gotten. The best phrase I heard was "entrepreneurial reward for managerial duty", and I fear it's become all-too-common. My eyes popped out of my head recently when I saw that Coca-Cola (yes, that same drink company that's done just fine for over a hundred years and whose organic growth rate might be 1% if they're lucky) was trying to give management $13…

God that is the truth. And the push for stock buybacks just continues to gloss over the issue. Stock outstanding continues to decline, but the amount of money spent on buybacks should be pushing shares out down twice as fast. Instead ridiculous stock options (executives need to be invested in the Company!) continue to dilute the impact of buybacks.

Re: Yahoo spends $58 million to fire its chief operating officer

#37

Post by chengiz »

stackcollision wrote: post #23
stingraycharles wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree. I'm currently in Asia and /everyone/ appears to be using a yahoo email. I even created some gmail addresses for them, but it just doesn't appeal to them.

From what I've heard, this is because many Asian countries have a culture of information flashbang. The Yahoo homepage is extremely cluttered and busy, which fits in with what they expect. The Google homepage, in contrast, is just an empty abyss they can't get anything from. Here in the States we seem to value minimalism, which might be one of the reasons people go to Google (aside from it being a great search engine…

Why are you comparing homepages when the discussion is about email?

This is completely wrong. Most of it is just history. Gmail doesnt value-add anything to people who are content with folders for their email. In fact the labels, conversations etc confuses them. Yahoo mail in other words has less clutter, not more. (And I'm not talking of the look of the page here, but the actual email functionality).

Re: Yahoo spends $58 million to fire its chief operating officer

#38

Post by mathattack »

malanj wrote: post #21

That has to be one of Marissa's most public mistakes yet. She was the one who pushed very hard for Yahoo to hire him. It's interesting that a few articles I read mention that he's really smart but not good with people. I've read that Marissa has the same characteristics, I wonder if that gave her a blind spot on this one?

This is old news, right? The money and mistake was already baked into the stock price.

To your point, we tend to like hiring people similar to ourselves because it's comfortable and validating. In reality what we need is people who cover our blind spots rather than share them. The great partnerships have this.

Re: Yahoo spends $58 million to fire its chief operating officer

#39

Post by jgalt212 »

Theodores wrote: post #6
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #3

I've been wondering: How's Marissa Meyer doing as CEO? I haven't heard much about Yahoo recently except that they acquired some companies in order to get talent in the mobile space. It's been about 1.75 years since she became CEO. Is that enough time for a non-Steve Jobs CEO to change the trajectory of a company?

You are forgetting: Marissa redesigned the logo! All by herself!!! Seriously though, what do Yahoo actually do? The mail has gone the way of 'compuserve' in that you don't very often get to see a yahoo address in an email these days. Search was something they just gave up on, then there portal style homepage, does anyone actually go there? They should have stuck with search, it was something that they were reasonably…

Yahoo mail works just fine, and I'd argue that it's a solid product. Further, by using Yahoo mail, and not gmail, that's one less area of my life Google is invading.
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