4 ms·

I find it really strange that Mayer gets the blame for Yahoo’s decline. Yahoo was racing downhill before Mayer was even considered for the CEO role there. I am

by dpark 5y ago

I find it really strange that Mayer gets the blame for Yahoo’s decline. Yahoo was racing downhill before Mayer was even considered for the CEO role there. I am doubtful anyone could have reversed Yahoo’s fortune. At least when Steve Jobs showed up to save Apple they had a core competency. Frankly Yahoo didn’t. Yahoo failed to capitalize on search until Google was entrenched. They failed to invest properly in targeted advertising until Google owned that as well. They sat on strategic investments like Flickr until they were nearly dead. They could have sold to Ballmer’s Microsoft for an unjustifiable fortune and somehow they fucked that up, too. They could have bought Google for change and said no. Yahoo lucked into success. It was literally started as a list of links. They realized people would pay a fortune for banner ads and raked in money hand over first until competent competitors appeared. They started Yahoo Mail which was a great idea but then made it feel low quality by sticking ads in outgoing email and then again just let it sit and rot. They bought a corporate mail app and then just sat on it, too. They didn’t even use it internally. Yahoo managed to treat every market opportunity the way Microsoft treated the post-iPhone mobile market. I worked at Yahoo during part of this decline. The frustrating thing was that Yahoo couldn’t decide what they were. They kept calling themselves a media company but that didn’t seem to mean anything. They didn’t have a plan to really grow their media presence and they were investing crazy in rebuilding an ad system that they couldn’t convince people to switch to. When Mayer came on board, lots of people (online at least) claimed that her real job was just to find an acquirer. That might not be far from the truth.

petilon 5y ago
> I find it really strange that Mayer gets the blame for Yahoo’s decline. Not strange at all. That's literally what a CEO gets paid to do: to not be in decline. Microsoft was in decline when Satya took over too. It is no longer in decline. He knows how to do the job, and he is doing it.
- dpark 5y ago
  The previous CEOs were also paid to do that job, so yes, it’s extremely strange when people point to Mayer as the problem with Yahoo and not, say, Koogle or Semel, who presided over a decade of bad decisions. It’s like Mayer was brought in to manage a burning building and everyone acts like she’s incompetent because the fire department couldn’t save what was left. (P.S. Microsoft was not actually in decline under Ballmer by sane metrics. Microsoft revenue had been climbing consistently. Stock was flat for a very long time though.)
- glenstein 5y ago
  That's an ok eli5 explainer of what a CEO is, but the positions of Microsoft and Yahoo are not remotely analogous, and the blame of Marissa Meyer flies in the face of any kind of appropriate portionality or historical context. I guess the part where I agree with you is the implicit acknowledgment that blame is merely a function of the job title, and not in any way correlated with any rational analysis of whether those expectations are realistic or accurate reflections of causality.
  - petilon 5y ago
    > blame is merely a function of the job title Marissa Meyer's name is indelibly linked to the Flickr fail. She promoted herself as a UX expert, then "improved" Flickr and ended up f??king it up. Excerpt from NYT story: “My focus at Google has been to deliver great end-user experiences, to delight and inspire our end users,” Ms. Mayer said in an interview. “That is what I plan to do at Yahoo, give the end user something valuable and delightful that makes them want to come to Yahoo every day.” https://www.wired.com/2013/04/flickr/ https://www.wired.com/2013/04/flickr/ https://gizmodo.com/flashback-how-yahoo-killed-flickr-and-lost-the-interne-508852335 https://gizmodo.com/flashback-how-yahoo-killed-flickr-and-lo... https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/technology/marissa-mayer-hopes-to-brighten-user-experience-at-yahoo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/technology/marissa-mayer-...
    - dpark 5y ago
      Flickr had already failed before Mayer ever showed up at Yahoo. They pretty much ignored it after the purchase aside from forcing yahoo logins. Mayer’s failure with Flickr is the same as SmugMug’s: an inability to revive a dying product. At least she tried. But also Flickr was hardly the biggest problem at Yahoo.
      - petilon 5y ago
        > At least she tried. There are no participation trophies in business. This isn't kindergarten. Before spending shareholder's money on an expensive project she should have checked if it makes sense to spend money on it. If she made the wrong call she alone is responsible for the mistake. > They pretty much ignored it after the purchase aside from forcing yahoo logins. Not true. They fully revamped the user experience, and Marissa Mayer was actively involved in the project.

by dpark 5y ago

petilon 5y ago

> I find it really strange that Mayer gets the blame for Yahoo’s decline. Not strange at all. That's literally what a CEO gets paid to do: to not be in decline. Microsoft was in decline when Satya took over too. It is no longer in decline. He knows how to do the job, and he is doing it.

dpark 5y ago
The previous CEOs were also paid to do that job, so yes, it’s extremely strange when people point to Mayer as the problem with Yahoo and not, say, Koogle or Semel, who presided over a decade of bad decisions. It’s like Mayer was brought in to manage a burning building and everyone acts like she’s incompetent because the fire department couldn’t save what was left. (P.S. Microsoft was not actually in decline under Ballmer by sane metrics. Microsoft revenue had been climbing consistently. Stock was flat for a very long time though.)
glenstein 5y ago
That's an ok eli5 explainer of what a CEO is, but the positions of Microsoft and Yahoo are not remotely analogous, and the blame of Marissa Meyer flies in the face of any kind of appropriate portionality or historical context. I guess the part where I agree with you is the implicit acknowledgment that blame is merely a function of the job title, and not in any way correlated with any rational analysis of whether those expectations are realistic or accurate reflections of causality.
- petilon 5y ago
  > blame is merely a function of the job title Marissa Meyer's name is indelibly linked to the Flickr fail. She promoted herself as a UX expert, then "improved" Flickr and ended up f??king it up. Excerpt from NYT story: “My focus at Google has been to deliver great end-user experiences, to delight and inspire our end users,” Ms. Mayer said in an interview. “That is what I plan to do at Yahoo, give the end user something valuable and delightful that makes them want to come to Yahoo every day.” https://www.wired.com/2013/04/flickr/ https://www.wired.com/2013/04/flickr/ https://gizmodo.com/flashback-how-yahoo-killed-flickr-and-lost-the-interne-508852335 https://gizmodo.com/flashback-how-yahoo-killed-flickr-and-lo... https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/technology/marissa-mayer-hopes-to-brighten-user-experience-at-yahoo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/technology/marissa-mayer-...
  - dpark 5y ago
    Flickr had already failed before Mayer ever showed up at Yahoo. They pretty much ignored it after the purchase aside from forcing yahoo logins. Mayer’s failure with Flickr is the same as SmugMug’s: an inability to revive a dying product. At least she tried. But also Flickr was hardly the biggest problem at Yahoo.
    - petilon 5y ago
      > At least she tried. There are no participation trophies in business. This isn't kindergarten. Before spending shareholder's money on an expensive project she should have checked if it makes sense to spend money on it. If she made the wrong call she alone is responsible for the mistake. > They pretty much ignored it after the purchase aside from forcing yahoo logins. Not true. They fully revamped the user experience, and Marissa Mayer was actively involved in the project.