7 ms·
Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo
- williesleg 11y agoThat's the funniest shit I've heard all day. Those women - Mayer, Meg Whitman, Angela Merkel, Christine Lagarde, Mary Barra, and let's not forget, Tim Cook, should all resign immediately. They're bringing down companies and in some cases entire economies with their destructive policies. And yet they still rake in millions in compensation. Makes you think there's something bigger going on.
- linuxkerneldev 11y agoI wish I could tell my customers, I just need 3 more years to solve these bugs.
- FLUX-YOU 11y agoAnd get paid millions.
- ant6n 11y agoI wish too that fixing those bugs last week had the same impact as turning around a struggling multi billion dollar business.
- chris_wot 11y agoYeah, because she hasn't had enough time already. Or made decisions that have made things worse at Yahoo.
- linuxkerneldev 11y ago"same impact as turning around a struggling multi billion dollar business." You make it sound like solving a complex problem in concurrency or memory management or compiler optimization or power management (that may directly and layer-indirectly affect millions of users, if not billions of devices) is "less impact" then a human-goal management problem of a company like Yahoo. Perhaps you believe Mayer's difficult task of specifying the right color of purple for the Yahoo Mail was somehow high impact? ""one day before Yahoo Mail was set to release, she convened a meeting at Phish Food, a conference room in the executive building of Yahoo’s campus, to talk about the product’s color. For months, the team had settled on blue and gray. If users were going to read emails on their phones all day long, the thinking went, it was best to choose the most subtly contrasting hues. But now, Mayer explained, she wanted to change the colors to various shades of purple, which she believed better suited Yahoo’s brand. According to one senior executive, Sharma’s body language changed the moment Mayer issued her request. He looked deflated. Altering the color of such an intricate product would require that members of his team spend all night adjusting colors in thousands of places. He slumped off and prepared to tell his staff the bad news. "" http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-when-marissa-mayer-tried-to-be-steve-jobs.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-whe...
- bluedino 11y agoThen you could work on the F-35!
- frik 11y agoYahoo has still some good assets. But they are killing them left and right. If Yahoo wants to survive as company, not just as Alibaba stock asset, they need a CEO who understands the entertainment, portal, advertisement and search business - after all that's Yahoo. The dumbest decision was to kill their search engine in 2009. It had the second largest market share back then. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search ) At least the open sourced Hadoop and Traffic server survived.
- dsr_ 11y agoPersonally? I'd give her three months to come up with a plan and tell everyone about it. For some reason I don't run the world.
- ddorian43 11y agoNeed 3 more years to really sink this ship.
- nabla9 11y agoIs she willing to take $1 pay and get rest of her compensation in stock options that expire 5 years from now? How much is she willing to invest in Yahoo stock or stock futures by herself? If I were in the Yahoo board, those would be my first questions. Best way to test her commitment and trust for her own strategy is to see how much she is willing to bet her own money on it.
- charlesdm 11y ago"Just three more years and it will all be OK!" This sounds familiar.
- heimatau 11y agoI had a lot of faith in Mayer's turn around. Do I think she needs more time? Yes. Do I think she can do it in more time? I'm skeptical now. Will the board, that she created, try to keep her accountable like you're saying? I hope so. I'm skeptical. It seems AOL/Armstrong really wanted to merge to become a new Yahoo. I'm curious on how Yahoo will pivot, with the time. FB, SnapChat, Instagram, Twitter, and Google are fighting for mobile ad revenue. It's my understanding that's how Yahoo is trying to reinvent itself. Might be too little, too late.
- BogusIKnow 11y agoI had no faith at all in Mayer. Not because she isn't a good product manager. Mainly because for a turnaround situation I would hire someone who was there before with a successful turnaround under h-- belt. Not someone without any turnaround knowledge (what to cut, high investor pressure, ...)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- threeseed 11y agoYahoo reminds me a lot of Apple before Steve Jobs rejoined. They don't need a turnaround artist like Gil Amelio they need an insanely great product person to bring back some innovation, creativity and attention to detail. Based on her experience and from what everyone says about her she should have been perfect. And I'm quite baffled why she's not managing to get any runs on the board.
- simula67 11y agoWhy is HN obsessed with Yahoo ? See for example : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11013507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11013507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11121796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11121796
- parfe 11y agoNothing to do with yahoo. Mayer failing makes hn happy. Wonder why?
- cbeach 11y agoYahoo is one of the oldest Internet companies. It's the first portal / search engine that some of us used on a regular basis. So it has a place in our hearts. It also pre-dates the era of gender hysteria and other assorted identity politics brought to tech by social justice warriors. Happier times.
- threeseed 11y ago> It also pre-dates the era of gender hysteria and other assorted identity politics brought to tech by social justice warriors. Sorry but this pretty much only exists in the minds of a niche group of disaffected, geeky men. The rest of the world has found more constructive ways to deal with the opposite sex and would find the idea we are living in an "era" of it frankly bizarre.
- cbeach 11y agoI don't think you understand my point. This isn't about eras of men or women. It's nothing to do with how men and women interact. My point was about eras of identity politics around gender.
- threeseed 11y agoYou specifically said "era of gender hysteria". But you're right maybe in the last 20+ years of being in IT I am yet to experience these mythical social justice warriors trying to infiltrate and corrupt the industry. Will definitely keep an eye out for them.
- brakmic 11y agoIs she selling Yahoo in pounds? Milligrams?
- mentos 11y agoAnyone else feel like a rebranding of the company should be considered?
- unclebucknasty 11y agoI don't. A re-branding would feel empty and solve no underlying problems. Their brand also has significant value, despite their struggles. What they need is a new product.
- draw_down 11y agoThey did that. She even "helped" with the design of the new logo, remember?
- paulddraper 11y agoAh, but what if they did another in the next three years? Perhaps that will work?
- detaro 11y agoThen they'd be a hodge-podge of stuff under a label nobody knows. I think that would be worse. Yahoo is "uncool", but not that bad a brand overall.
- jackmodern 11y agoHer answers were very trump like "some things have gone well, some things haven't gone well, some things have grown faster than expected, some have gone slower" "Have we made big bets? Yes we've made some big bets" No real insight into changes that are coming up, just really empty answers.
- shubhamjain 11y agoThe management, the talent may have infinite problems and might have contributed to Yahoo's demise but I don't think solving any of them would give it a magical upswing. There is no way it can get turnaround without nailing down a product that everyone wants. Frankly, I don't see that happening in near future, considering that all the previous efforts including acquisition of Tumblr haven't really contributed much.
- revel 11y agoYahoo has already transitioned into being a niche advertising and media company. That's not necessarily a problem, but Yahoo still fancies itself as big tech player and that hasn't been the case for over a decade. It may make sense for Yahoo to try and become a better media and advertising company, but Marissa Mayer is surely not the best choice of CEO for that kind of company. I'm not even saying she's a bad CEO, just that she is not an appropriate choice for the kind of company that Yahoo has become. I don't see how 3 more years with her at the helm can result anything other than an extension of Yahoo's long skid into mediocrity.
- shubhamjain 11y agoI don't think Yahoo could ever make that transition without losing billions in market cap. I know that's what is happening right now but it is a tough call - make a last ditch try to be "genuine" tech company or kill everything to make business of whatever is possible. Considering that Yahoo still has tech talent and a tech executive as it's CEO, I can guess it will try to gamble on the former.
- aNoob7000 11y agoI couldn't agree more with your assessment. I'm just amazed that the Yahoo board hasn't fired her yet with her overall performance in the past four years. She's been paid handsomely and delivered very little.
- cft 11y agoOne of their most valuable assets is Android Yahoo Mail app, that they are methodically killing: my mom (a loyal Yahoo user of 18+ years) says it has become too complicated (grouping conversations), with an unpredictable spam filter. Until recently it suffered from a serious memory leak (which was not fixed for years). They already successfully killed the Android Yahoo Messenger app (remember when Yahoo Messenger was huge on desktop?). Ironically, WhatsApp founders are from Yahoo...
- dingbat 11y agowho needs functional email.. Y! really needs more katie couric, to retain loyal users like your mom
- wahsd 11y agoJune
- hajrice 11y agoNot sure why all the hate. When she joined Yahoo in 2012, stock was ~$18 for a good 6 years. Since then, it's doubled
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- programminggeek 11y agoI don't think she can turn it around in ANY amount of time.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoDo you think anyone can?
- programminggeek 11y agoNo.
- js2 11y agoYou can watch the full interview at http://charlierose.com/ http://charlierose.com/ (I'm on mobile and don't see a way to link to a permanent URL, but the video is currently on the front page.)
- ErlangKing 11y agoYahoo has been slowly dying for a while, and has just started to rapidly die. She shouldn't get three more years. A man wouldn't get it.
- planetjones 11y agoYahoo mail has got much worse under her leadership. Flickr has become unreliable and buggy under her leadership. Personally I wouldn't pay her another dime.
- dexterdog 11y agoDid Pipes go away on her watch? That was a sad day.
- justabystander 11y ago> Marissa Mayer ... has a “three-year strategic plan” ... that entails building and improving the services people use on their mobile phones every day, such as search. It's a good thing they killed their own search engine and tossed the majority of their mobile apps, then. And that it all happened under Mayer's leadership. Considering they've lost a lot of experience and market share in search and mobile, I'm sure they'll be well prepared for this. To be fair, streamlining the app portfolio isn't a bad thing, as they had a bit of cruft. But she's had years to make these changes into a reality without success. It's hard to tell if she's asking for three more years in order to continue the same ineffective moves or to undo them. Who knows? Maybe if she runs the ship far enough aground it'll grow legs.
- known 11y agoNo. Thanks.
- manishsharan 11y agoI am sorry to say that Yahoo management doesn't have a clue about what its doing. Case in point : I used to be a avid fan of the show Community and was elated when Yahoo picked it up. However for Canadian viewers I learnt it was only available only certain days of the week. WTF? And don't event get me started on the streaming issue. They couldn't even get the basics of online video right.
- irq-1 11y ago> only available only certain days of the week. WTF? Hilarious. Conways law in action. "organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law
- dang 11y agoI recently learned that Mel Conway (the same Conway) did some of the earliest work on recursive descent parsers. http://www.melconway.com/Home/Inventor.html http://www.melconway.com/Home/Inventor.html Appel's compiler book credits him with the invention, but Cooper and Torczon cite one earlier reference. Edit: poking around that site reveals an article which seems like it deserves a thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11273710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11273710.
- agumonkey 11y agoSlightly related, I learned today that the 4-color theorem Appel is Compiler Appel's father. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem#Proof_by_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem#Proof_by_co... https://twitter.com/agumonkey/status/708681730278989824 https://twitter.com/agumonkey/status/708681730278989824 (all this after reading that prolog primer http://www.cpp.edu/~jrfisher/www/prolog_tutorial/pt_framer.html http://www.cpp.edu/~jrfisher/www/prolog_tutorial/pt_framer.h...)
- 11y ago
- hobaak 11y agoUnder her tenure, yahoo product quality went downhill. I think the course is set to go out of business. 1
- braythwayt 11y agoMaybe instead of beating up on MM, we could look at Yahoo the way we look at Twitter: Yahoo could be great if the world would let Yahoo be Yahoo. But Yahoo being Yahoo would be a smaller company, with smaller, focused business, and happy customers. But it would have a smaller market cap, and today’s investors would take a massive haircut. So they keep plowing ahead trying to be a tech giant. Because they bought tech giant shares, and it’s tech giant, or collapse until it’s sold for scrap. And MM has to parrot the “this is the road back to being a tech giant” line to keep the illusion alive. I’m not sure that anyone can do any better given the “tech giant or nothing” circumstances.
- _greim_ 11y agoNice insight. Seems like there's a pattern here, in which high public visibility creates expectations which push a company out of its optimal mode of operation.
- Apocryphon 11y agoMuch has been made about how the financialization of our economy is wrecking the public sector. But it seems like similarly, the credo of "the investor is always right" and "the board is law" is also harming the private sector.
- jacquesm 11y agoThis happens all the time when VCs fund companies that they had better stay away from. That said, Yahoo! had potential at the time and actually was a giant (the #1 website in the world for a very long time).
- wodenokoto 11y agoI think you put it very elegantly in the first paragraph but I disagree with the rest. The problem is much worse. The owners of Yahoo don't even want a tech giant. They don't even want a company, they want to sell it as scrap. That's a tough environment to work in when you are hired to run a company.
- 11y ago
- 0xmohit 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
- nickgrosvenor 11y agoummm....
- bborud 11y agoMy first question would be, as it has been for 12 years: "what is Yahoo supposed to be good at?". The failure to answer that has been Yahoo's biggest problem for the entire last decade, and probably for most of the one before that. In fact, this was the first question I asked when the company I worked for was acquired by Yahoo and their management team came over to talk to us. The answer I got was a completely delusional "we take what others have invented and we do it better". I didn't score any brownie-points for pointing out that while the copying bit was true enough, the "improving" part was pure wishful thinking unconnected with any observable reality. I kept insisting on an answer, I never got one and eventually I quit and joined a competitor. I think the key question is not whether or not Marissa believes she can save the company. She might be delusional as well. The question is whether or not Marissa can articulate what Yahoo is supposed to be good at.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoA number of us here agreed it was a nice one-stop shop for a little bit of everything with Directories' curated info being a particular gem. Thing is, the former has been 100% surpassed (esp by Facebook/Google) with the later sold off long time ago. So, the question must be asked. I supported Marissa's first attempt to save it. Looking at current situation, I'd reject the second one. She could apply this attitude to less hopeless companies with a lot better results.
- wodenokoto 11y agoA lot of commentors are writing things like "if Yahoo wants to succeed...", but the thing is, a large part of yahoo doesn't want to succeed.
- nickthemagicman 11y agoMarissa Myspace
- redwood 11y agoYahoo could have been the dominant messenger. But then they killed the browser based messenger... forced you to use their terrible email based messenger. And then forced you to use their atrocious mobile app which forces you to verify phone number. They expelled at anon/safe communication before that but then everyone went to kik/snapchat/what's app/etc
- elorant 11y agoYahoo! was great fifteen years ago, now it’s just irrelevant. The world moved on to niche content sites and they were left behind. I can’t think of a single sector where I’d choose them over competition. I’ve heard that their web mail service is stellar but so is Gmail and I’m staying with it. It’s not like they came up with a service that was x10 times better than anything out there, far from it. They have been around since the dawn of the web and haven’t manage to build anything innovative in the last ten years. Where is Yahoo! in the whole social media thing? I mean Google tried their luck with Google+. What did Yahoo! did? They bought Tumblr and didn’t even bother to integrate it with their services. Yahoo! has to focus on doing one thing and doing it very well. They can’t be both a services and a content shop. It doesn’t work like that. When it comes to content they have to compete with traditional news organizations that have decades of experience on the field. When was the last time you read something interesting and original on Yahoo!? For me, it’s like never. The problem though is that if they had to choose one sector that would mean massive layoffs and that in turn would send the stock way down. So that’s never going to happen, at least not unless reality hits them hard. I feel kind of sad for them though because for me there was a time that I visited Yahoo! on a daily basis, before Google came-up with a better search algorithm and stormed the web. As with every company that was there from the beginning they hold a special place in my heart. But the reality of the web is that unless you innovate you become obsolete sooner or later.
- rythie 11y agoFlickr is still the go to site for photographers, there are other sites, but Flickr is the most popular. However, Adverts on login page suck though and for those that don't pay they have adverts inserted that look exactly like photos. I don't see the later normally, but it's a pretty awful way to make money (though Google search and Facebook advertising are equally bad).
- ceocoder 11y agoYahoo!'s identity crisis has been going on for at least 6 years, here[1] is then Yahoo! CEO trying to describe "what is Yahoo!" in 2010 . It may have started earlier, but this was the first time I noticed it. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/28/ok-seriously-what-is-yahoo/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/28/ok-seriously-what-is-yahoo/
- faCeti0us 11y agoThe best thing yahoo has done is create a robust fantasy football platform. If they could innovate half as well as they built that platform, they would be ok.
- yuhong 11y agoI hope the double taxation on sales can be fixed in the three years.
- theworstshill 11y agoThere are comments from current and ex yahoo employees floating around the web and the consensus is that basically MM burned it to the ground. Its game over for yahoo, let it serve as an example to others of what happens when people doing the actual work get the f out.