9 ms·
Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer Stumbled After Secret Truce with Activist Investor
- jasonshen 10y agoSomeone have the full text?
- fridayoff 10y agoWhy are posts that require a sign in or subscription even allowed?
- nemothekid 10y agoWhy do people who complain about wsj on every thread even allowed? Click the "web" link.
- RUBwkVjwLsDKgPw 10y agoSome of us are on mobile...
- irq 10y agoTo add clarity to this statement, for some unfathomable reason, the "web" link does not show up on the mobile version of HN.
- smcl 10y agoI think if so many people complain about it then the link isn't very well known
- coderdude 10y agoI've been here for ages and it didn't occur to me to use the Web link to sneak past their sign up wall earlier today. I support no longer allowing submissions that require "one weird trick" just to read.
- bryanlarsen 10y ago"Tell HN: Paywalls with workarounds are OK; paywall complaints are off topic" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
- coderdude 10y agoThat's lame. If I had seen that post that one day I would have chimed in. Good to know their stance though. Added: Send us update emails when you come to decisions like these. It would help keep me and others informed. I don't regularly re-read the guidelines and sometimes I miss threads like those.
- bpchaps 10y agoYeah, it's really frustrating. This site is full of incredibly smart people who come up with clever solutions for all sorts of things. But we can't come up with a clever, non-invasive solution to something like this?
- prewett 10y agoThe fact that the web link is on the comments page makes it pretty difficult to find. Took me quite a bit of wondering what people were talking about until I finally found it one day. Moving the web link to page where the main link is would be an obvious solution.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- fridayoff 10y agoWhy doesn't "web" link pop up when the link to the article is clicked instead of sign or subscribe? How would people know without this comment?
- jessriedel 10y agoIt doesn't work for me on Chrome (which I usually use), but does on Safari (which I don't) I guess I have to clear my cookies or something? I also support not submitting articles that require workarounds.
- benologist 10y agoFlagging WSJ until they're shut out of HN will effect more change - they still gain SEO and popularity and social benefits from us using their contrived "trick" to leech off this community.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- greenyoda 10y agoThis isn't some kind of "contrived trick". The reason WSJ articles are available via Google search (which is what HN's "web" link does) is because Google won't index pages that can't be read by everyone clicking on a search engine result, and WSJ wants their articles to be searchable via Google.
- benologist 10y agoTheir contrived "hack" is left there so the internet will spread their paid content. They even experiment wth it. http://digiday.com/publishers/wall-street-journal-paywall-google/ http://digiday.com/publishers/wall-street-journal-paywall-go...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- balls187 10y agoThank you for this. I learned something new today!
- mathattack 10y agoCopy/paste the title into Google, and follow the link.
- undecidedly 10y agoI'd consider reading it if I didn't have to sign up.
- kartD 10y agoJust go a google search of the title and you can get around the sub-wall
- jessriedel 10y agoThis doesn't work for me on my default browser.
- effingwewt 10y agoYou're being downvoted, but I heartily agree. I would have no trouble paying only for the "good" content, things I will like or know I want or feel a need to read. I really think some form of microtransactions are the way to go here. This is simply one article that is, to quote another comment, a "dead horse", and not something I'd be inclined to read. Had it been an article on, say, some breaking news, or interesting financial news even, I'd happily pay and continue reading. Blanket subscriptions are the new cable t.v. channel bundles. Even though you want 3, pay for 219. Perhaps they could offer both?
- choward 10y agoIt's lame that I have to use the google referrer trick: https://www.google.com/search?q=Yahoo%27s+Marissa+Mayer+Stumbled+After+Secret+Truce+With+Investor https://www.google.com/search?q=Yahoo%27s+Marissa+Mayer+Stum...
- jszymborski 10y agoanother good one is archive.is/[url] here's the full text: https://archive.is/glTH3 https://archive.is/glTH3
- manigandham 10y agoWhy is it lame that the publisher would like to be compensated for their work?
- icebraining 10y agoIt might not be, but it's kinda lame to link to it here since many can't afford to pay for every single subscription site. Maybe if there was an option to pay per-article, but until then, it's simply unfeasible.
- bpchaps 10y agoBecause it makes a very hostile environment for independent journalists.
- joslin01 10y ago> She has defended her strategy by stressing that growth is the lifeblood of internet businesses. Or, you know, utility. It's funny how she defends all these acquisitions underneath some imaginary fable that growth == success. Google didn't reach where it is today because it grew fast -- it was able to grow because it has basic utility and was known as the best amongst the competitors. The key question for Yahoo has always been, what is the core part of our business that users love us for? As she probably knew, fantasy sports is a big one, but unfortunately that's not going to be enough for a company as large as Yahoo. As a result, they bought up a bunch of startups to try and find more core-utility. It's been fun to watch, but I'm with the crowd that says Yahoo can't really change and should just sell its core off. When the average consumer thinks internet, they're not thinking "oh thank god Yahoo is there", but without Google or Amazon -- two companies that can justify aggressive growth -- we'd be left with a shoddier internet and that's just the basic truth of it all.
- Touche 10y agoYahoo was sustainable and profitable. They weren't as big as Google or Amazon but they made a lot of money. But that wasn't good enough for the investors or the public, who want infinite growth.
- WalterBright 10y agoI never understood the mania for growth. If a company is reliably returning, say, 20% profit, I wouldn't mess with success.
- jonknee 10y agoThe world isn't static, a "reliable" profit is worth less and less each year if a company isn't growing. Companies are valued based on their future earnings potential, growing companies will thus be valued much more highly. In Yahoo's case not only was there no growth, but their business was shrinking without a clear path to stopping that.
- refurb 10y ago
- codezero 10y agoIf you're curious what an activist investor is: "An activist investor is an individual or group that purchases large numbers of a public company's shares and/or tries to obtain seats on the company's board with the goal of effecting a major change in the company."
- chetanahuja 10y agoWhen Meyer left google, I was of the opinion that it's a good move for her. She had strong signals that her rise at Google was limited. This is when Larry Page had taken over as CEO and created a new "inner circle" of 7 senior VP's and Marissa was not one of them. I thought it was a good move for her because she gets to be a big fish in a smaller pond and gets her name out there as a CEO. Pretty much nobody would blame her if Yahoo ended up bankrupt anyway since nobody had high hopes. But at this point it feels like her brand is damaged along with Yahoo's because of the leaks of boardroom struggles more than just the failure to revive Yahoo's business.
- this_user 10y agoIf she had managed to turn the company around, she would have become a legendary tech CEO. Either way she has made a lot of money and stands to make even more no matter what happens. So, in the end, this was still a good move for her.
- jonknee 10y agoIndeed, she has greatly enriched herself while flailing: > If Yahoo is sold and Ms. Mayer is terminated as a result, she stands to receive about $55 million. Since joining Yahoo, she has received $118.2 million in cash and equity compensation.
- overcast 10y agoAmazing that someone who failed, gets such compensation. Top execs should be paid proportional to profit. Of course this would never happen, but one can dream.
- rifung 10y agoI think in some ways it makes sense that she gets paid so much though.. A failing company probably needs to give a greater incentive for someone to want to be their CEO. It'd probably be difficult for Mayer to get another CEO position in the future despite the fact that a turnaround at Yahoo would have been difficult for anyone. In a way she's being paid proportional to the risk associated with the job.
- bpchaps 10y agoSerious/meta - Can we please stop posting wsj with their paywall nonsense? We hear all the time about talking with our money to get rid of this sort of thing, but it's never actually done. As a community, we should actually do something instead of armchairing it. (Yes, I know about the "web" button.) To the downvoters: If there was a better place to post on this, I would. But since there isn't, this is my only option. Explanations for downvotes help the discussion. Downvotes by themselves just hides the discussion.
- jonknee 10y agoIf it's quality original reporting I think it should be linked to.
- bpchaps 10y agoOr, alternatively, the "Web" button should be the default for sites like this. Quality and original reporting is very nice, but the continuation of paywalls still pushes reporting towards profiting over news.
- tacos 10y agoGeeze. Click the damn "web" button. There's so little quality news information left on the web the least you can do is spend five seconds to hack around the plebwall.
- bpchaps 10y agoI have experience with private investigative journalism and can personally speak on how bad it is. This is awful obfuscation of news. There's little quality news because it's about what's interesting and what will make the most money. This is not what news is supposed to be about. Example - after the Tribune posted an article about a lawsuit they filed for getting the Chicago mayor's email records, I called the reporter who wrote it about with my own research for the mayor's phone records. Wanted to see if he was interested in writing about my work. He said, with the most apathetic voice, that he didn't do any of the research and was "just doing a job". He forwarded me to the reporter who did the research, but he never called me back. Later, called DNAInfo who eats this sort of thing up. They didn't want to touch it because my reasoning for requesting the records wasn't interesting enough. It's frustrating, and it's even more frustrating seeing WSJ pull this shit without anybody speaking out.. Top-down reporting is bullshit.
- 0xmohit 10y agoHacker News appears to be turning into Mayer News. Is Yahoo! acquiring YCombinator?
- mathattack 10y agoI think you have the buyer and seller backwards. :-)
- whack 10y agoI enjoyed the first couple of Yahoo/Meyer post-mortems, but at this point, it just seems like people are flogging a dead horse and taking potshots at Meyer while she's down. She took on a hard job at a struggling company with minimal core competencies and a downward trajectory. Yes, she spent big and made a number of risky bets, which ultimately didn't pay off. Few people took a stand against her when she made those bets, but now that we know the outcome, everyone's suddenly an expert who knew better all along. Yes, she wasn't able to save a sinking ship, and yes, we now know that she's no Steve Jobs. But that just makes her an average executive, in the same league as most SVPs/CEOs out there. It doesn't make her a failure or incompetent. Let's bury this dead horse already.
- golergka 10y agoI don't think that most CEOs/VPs would take such a job in the first place though.
- jedberg 10y agoI think they would. If you can turn Yahoo around, you become legendary. CEOs are already risk takers, it makes sense. Also it wasn't all that risky. Even though she failed she'll walk away with enough money for a lifetime (to add on top of the lifetime supply she already had).
- EpicEng 10y ago>I don't think that most CEOs/VPs would take such a job in the first place though You don't? A job with a huge potential payoff while making oodles of money in the meantime? Yeah, sounds awful. You fail that job and, worst case, your family is set up for 3+ generations.
- xenihn 10y ago>Few people took a stand against her when she made those bets I'd like to know why you think that nobody wanted to call her out publicly. I'm not disagreeing with you, I just want to know your opinion in regards to why people kept quiet.
- cxseven 10y agoIt's strange that Yahoo once had a very popular suite of multiplayer online Java games (mostly board games) and failed to use them to gain an early advantage on mobile apps.