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I think there's plenty to make a case that Mayer specifically was a large negative vs Yahoo on twin-earth where someone else was CEO. Many(?) aquisitions were

I think there's plenty to make a case that Mayer specifically was a large negative vs Yahoo on twin-earth where someone else was CEO. Many(?) aquisitions were her plan. From the article: > goodwill impairment charges of $1.2 billion This means since 2012 Mayer has overseen the aquisition of companies for at least $1.2b more than their book-value worth, and now that value is gone. Paid a premium for brands and then lost the value of those brands. ~~~ > “She believes she can figure it out on her own,” says a former top Yahoo exec. “Her attitude is, ‘I watch TV shows, so I know TV shows.’” Mayer hired Katie Couric — in a deal reportedly worth up to $10 million per year, mostly in stock — because she personally likes the former TV news personality, without a sense of where and how Couric’s brand would appeal to Yahoo’s user base ~~~ > Mayer was gung-ho on expanding Yahoo’s media business, particularly in video entertainment, approving a Netflix-like slate of scripted original series with a seven-year business plan to recoup the investment > Yahoo formally exited TV-style entertainment in the third quarter of 2015, taking a $42 million write-down on [original series, deals, then axed Yahoo Screen division] Her plan. ~~~ > Yahoo in February folded seven digital magazines, including titles covering food and travel, which had been a Mayer pet project. She wanted to launch dozens of vertically oriented magazines, dictating that they use Tumblr-based designs, hoping to better monetize Yahoo’s monthly audience. Her plan. > Mayer has positioned those closures as a refocusing on Yahoo’s four strongest content segments — news, sports, finance, and lifestyle — as the company aims to cut 15% of its workforce over the course of 2016. But those were the areas on which Yahoo should have stayed laser-focused all along, according to S&P’s Kessler. ~~~ She had ideas that were either unworkable, poorly implemented, or she was unknowledgeable and hired the wrong people. > I don't think the failure is on Mayer That's how this works. She had a job and failed. It's okay to say that. They aren't paying her to not take responsibility. They will be paying her more than you and I and many readers of this comment combined may ever make, just to leave.

LogicFailsMe 10y ago
Or in other words, she tried to run Yahoo like it was Google. My experience at Google led me to see it as a bunch of poorly executed clones of trendy startups that never ship. However, their insane ad revenue keeps the boat afloat, and allows them to fund moonshots and failures. Yahoo doesn't have that insane revenue stream so that strategy didn't work out so well there. Am I missing something?
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I don't think you're missing anything. That quote about "throwing rocks" in the article is misleading - Google has done exactly that and succeeded. Their trick is that they're standing in a quarry and don't have to give a damn how many rocks miss as long as they get the occasional hit. Mayer carried over that philosophy to a company with half a dozen rocks and nowhere to get more. It's telling that Mayer never really revealed a 'plan' for Yahoo ('content' and 'advertising' don't count). She bought a bunch of things, tried a bunch of deals, and clearly expected value to shake out somewhere like it does for Google. But Yahoo doesn't have the time, revenue, or infrastructure to slot in a stream of experiments and wait for a win - their only attributes were staff and users, and they needed to consciously turn that into money. It's closer to Facebook's monetization task than Google's, and regardless of her talent Mayer's background was an impediment to what needed to happen.
  - malisbad 10y ago
    I had come here to say this. Look at all the products left dead in Google's wake. Wave is probably one of the biggest "before its time" products that got destroyed, amongst others.
- prplhaz4 10y ago
  I'd imagine it's easy to learn some bad habits as an executive at Google, where your budget limitless, and you're rewarded for creativity and innovation. That management style does not fly at a company that has no real product or revenue and is struggling to become profitable. Most "normal" companies just do not have the luxury of withstanding a huge margin of error on cost vs benefit.
tgb29 10y ago
Your evidence convinces me to agree with your position. On my mind always is the Yahoo Fantasy Football product. In the past few years, the NFL has grown and other fantasy products have grown in value. Why was Yahoo not able to do the same? Why didn't they leverage the value of their sports products?
- eonw 10y ago
  i interviewed as a front end developer for the yahoo fantasy sports team, the tech interview focused on balancing trees... which IMHO is totally unrelated to front end web dev. you wonder why they lost?
  - vthallam 10y ago
    Haha! I heard this kind of experience from some others who interviewed with various companies too. Always wonder why would anyone do that?
    - mikestew 10y ago
      You know how many linked lists I've had to traverse in interviews? Wanna know how many linked lists I've had to traverse in my daily work in the last 5 years? People do that because they're lazy and/or inexperienced interviewers.
      - smitherfield 10y ago
        What language/field do you work in? Usually one of a language's native data types will be implemented as a linked list, and/or something in a popular library will. That said nobody should ever need to roll their own functions for operating on linked lists.
        douche 10y ago
        Linked lists are slow as shit, most of the time. Even things that looks like they are linked lists, i.e. C#'s List<T>, are really dynamic arrays, akin to std::vector. Cache coherency matters.
drdoom 10y ago
Good points. I agree completely. Yahoo has also gone from a genuinely useful and relevant aggregator to a full-blown click-bait shop. Perhaps this is how she thought Google makes its billions and she wanted to emulate it. Sad but she will be richer for it.
0xmohit 10y ago
> They will be paying her more than you and I and many readers of this comment combined may ever make, just to leave. Who knows that they might be still better off? That is probably the premium needed in order to limit one's losses.
nikdaheratik 10y ago
I don't think any of the items you've mentioned really mattered. They were moonshots but the issue with Yahoo, in my mind, is that the investors have different ideas about what they want and how valuable the company really is. And I don't think anything she, or anyone else, did would have made a bit of difference. There are basically two camps: The founder camps that want to try and prop up the value in order to keep their stake high, and the shark investor camp that are betting on some kind of acquisition (leveraged around the value of Y! Japan and Alibaba) for them to cash in their stake. The first is the one pushing for all the moonshots (and were the ones moving to hire her in the first place) and the second group would love for her to fail so they can move on with selling the company and get their stake back. All of the "moonshots" you've mentioned are basically just late game hail mary's that were likely not going to work. IMO, the only way for any CEO to get the business turned around would be to pay off all the shark tank shareholders, strip out as much of the non-core business as they can, and then rebuild the brand from the ground up. However, the founder shareholder camp is firmly against that for a number of reasons, including the fact that many of them would be the ones losing their place at the company. If you look at the stories of successful turnarounds, they all had unified investors. In the case of Apple, everyone rallied around Jobs because they knew their stake was worthless if they didn't give up on their pet projects. But because of the other investments, there's a solid floor on the value of the company, so all of the key investors know there's a fairly solid floor price on the shares, and everything else is just house money. Why not bet on moonshots in that case?

LogicFailsMe 10y ago

Or in other words, she tried to run Yahoo like it was Google. My experience at Google led me to see it as a bunch of poorly executed clones of trendy startups that never ship. However, their insane ad revenue keeps the boat afloat, and allows them to fund moonshots and failures. Yahoo doesn't have that insane revenue stream so that strategy didn't work out so well there. Am I missing something?

Bartweiss 10y ago
I don't think you're missing anything. That quote about "throwing rocks" in the article is misleading - Google has done exactly that and succeeded. Their trick is that they're standing in a quarry and don't have to give a damn how many rocks miss as long as they get the occasional hit. Mayer carried over that philosophy to a company with half a dozen rocks and nowhere to get more. It's telling that Mayer never really revealed a 'plan' for Yahoo ('content' and 'advertising' don't count). She bought a bunch of things, tried a bunch of deals, and clearly expected value to shake out somewhere like it does for Google. But Yahoo doesn't have the time, revenue, or infrastructure to slot in a stream of experiments and wait for a win - their only attributes were staff and users, and they needed to consciously turn that into money. It's closer to Facebook's monetization task than Google's, and regardless of her talent Mayer's background was an impediment to what needed to happen.
- malisbad 10y ago
  I had come here to say this. Look at all the products left dead in Google's wake. Wave is probably one of the biggest "before its time" products that got destroyed, amongst others.
prplhaz4 10y ago
I'd imagine it's easy to learn some bad habits as an executive at Google, where your budget limitless, and you're rewarded for creativity and innovation. That management style does not fly at a company that has no real product or revenue and is struggling to become profitable. Most "normal" companies just do not have the luxury of withstanding a huge margin of error on cost vs benefit.

tgb29 10y ago

Your evidence convinces me to agree with your position. On my mind always is the Yahoo Fantasy Football product. In the past few years, the NFL has grown and other fantasy products have grown in value. Why was Yahoo not able to do the same? Why didn't they leverage the value of their sports products?

eonw 10y ago
i interviewed as a front end developer for the yahoo fantasy sports team, the tech interview focused on balancing trees... which IMHO is totally unrelated to front end web dev. you wonder why they lost?
- vthallam 10y ago
  Haha! I heard this kind of experience from some others who interviewed with various companies too. Always wonder why would anyone do that?
  - mikestew 10y ago
    You know how many linked lists I've had to traverse in interviews? Wanna know how many linked lists I've had to traverse in my daily work in the last 5 years? People do that because they're lazy and/or inexperienced interviewers.
    - smitherfield 10y ago
      What language/field do you work in? Usually one of a language's native data types will be implemented as a linked list, and/or something in a popular library will. That said nobody should ever need to roll their own functions for operating on linked lists.
      - douche 10y ago
        Linked lists are slow as shit, most of the time. Even things that looks like they are linked lists, i.e. C#'s List<T>, are really dynamic arrays, akin to std::vector. Cache coherency matters.

drdoom 10y ago

Good points. I agree completely. Yahoo has also gone from a genuinely useful and relevant aggregator to a full-blown click-bait shop. Perhaps this is how she thought Google makes its billions and she wanted to emulate it. Sad but she will be richer for it.

0xmohit 10y ago

> They will be paying her more than you and I and many readers of this comment combined may ever make, just to leave. Who knows that they might be still better off? That is probably the premium needed in order to limit one's losses.

nikdaheratik 10y ago

I don't think any of the items you've mentioned really mattered. They were moonshots but the issue with Yahoo, in my mind, is that the investors have different ideas about what they want and how valuable the company really is. And I don't think anything she, or anyone else, did would have made a bit of difference. There are basically two camps: The founder camps that want to try and prop up the value in order to keep their stake high, and the shark investor camp that are betting on some kind of acquisition (leveraged around the value of Y! Japan and Alibaba) for them to cash in their stake. The first is the one pushing for all the moonshots (and were the ones moving to hire her in the first place) and the second group would love for her to fail so they can move on with selling the company and get their stake back. All of the "moonshots" you've mentioned are basically just late game hail mary's that were likely not going to work. IMO, the only way for any CEO to get the business turned around would be to pay off all the shark tank shareholders, strip out as much of the non-core business as they can, and then rebuild the brand from the ground up. However, the founder shareholder camp is firmly against that for a number of reasons, including the fact that many of them would be the ones losing their place at the company. If you look at the stories of successful turnarounds, they all had unified investors. In the case of Apple, everyone rallied around Jobs because they knew their stake was worthless if they didn't give up on their pet projects. But because of the other investments, there's a solid floor on the value of the company, so all of the key investors know there's a fairly solid floor price on the shares, and everything else is just house money. Why not bet on moonshots in that case?