I'm not Marissa's biggest fan (and have made a few comments here against her), but the spinoff was not her first choice. In fact, there was an original plan tha

I'm not Marissa's biggest fan (and have made a few comments here against her), but the spinoff was not her first choice. In fact, there was an original plan that would have spun off Alibaba and a small part of Yahoo (Yahoo Small Business, I think) and kept the core business going. Activist investors weren't very receiving of that idea though. Source: I was at Yahoo back then.