>So Mayer had a plan to bolster Yahoo’s mobile offerings and once again make it a top internet destination. However, a plan like this has three drawbacks: 1) De

>So Mayer had a plan to bolster Yahoo’s mobile offerings and once again make it a top internet destination. However, a plan like this has three drawbacks: 1) Developing desirable well-trafficked mobile properties requires lots of hard-to-hire-for mobile design, engineering, and product talent. So Mayer chose to acquihire promising mobile startups instead. Actually, when Mayer came on to Yahoo as CEO, Yahoo recruited pretty efficiently. I am a decent mobile engineer and I was really tempted to apply when a recruiter reached out. It was the wrong moment for me, being really happy at my job that time - a year later or before I would have likely proceeded with the interview. Another strong mobile engineer friend of mine got rejected on the Yahoo interviews and was pretty disappointed at the time. The story recruiters were telling was that they are builing a bunch of greenfield mobile projects, as well as having a couple of "startups within a big startup", with the financial security of Yahoo. This was very credible at the time and I'm sure they did get a lot of engineering talent into the company. I do not know what the main things were that went wrong. However I would not pinpoint it to recruitment or lack of engineering talent: they did well on that. As an outsider engineer my guess would be culture and non consistent strategy or vision. Building mobile apps for the sake of building mobile apps and getting users was never a viable vision even in 2012.