Amazon is an interesting case. With their radical reinvestment strategy of quiet, organic growth, they are the absolute anti-Yahoo. Off the top of my head, I ca

Amazon is an interesting case. With their radical reinvestment strategy of quiet, organic growth, they are the absolute anti-Yahoo. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single high profile acquisition that Amazon did, whereas Yahoo has a reputation for being the place where the flickrs of the world go to die. Amazon contrasts this with being more like a old economy corporation with merely an internet front. They invest in boring brick-and-mortar logistics-factories, computing-factories and so on that no "true internet company" would touch with a long stick. Maybe Yahoo has long ago accepted that their only remaining shareholders must be in it for the exciting, flashy news headlines. In that case, they might feel compelled to go for an exceptionally expensive CEO only for the news value, just like very expensive watches are not bought despite their price but because of it. Marissa Mayer then would not have made it if she offered to do the job for half the price, not beating everybody else's CEO spending would have been out of character for Yahoo.