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In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

223 points by drgath 14y ago

ilaksh 14y ago
I know people always make fun of Yahoo Answers, with good reason, but I think that when it comes down to it, Yahoo Answers is one of the web's most important resources, just because there are so many questions and answers that it covers quite a lot of popular topics. True that a lot of it is stupid or nonsense, but there is actually also a lot of useful and timely information in there. I also remember using the Yahoo fantasy sports thing and it seemed pretty good to me. And to be honest the Yahoo mail program is really attractive looking to me and very functional. Yahoo Groups is extremely useful also. I guess however its hard to compete with things like gmail, reddit and meetup.com. So anyway since half of the comments in this thread are basically going on a 'pretend you are the new CEO of Yahoo, what would you do' thing, I want to play also. Actually Yahoo has so much going on, its kind of hard to NOT want to play that game. One thing to focus on making Yahoo Answers better. Maybe more ajaxy and realtime. Maybe make the app better (ask questions? voice input?). Maybe even do a deal with stackoverflow or something (although stackoverflow users might not appreciate that). It seems like they have a ton of useful applications and other stuff. I forgot one: Yahoo Games. I guess the hard part is making money from all of those things. I think to figure out what to do I would need to know how much each of those different parts of Yahoo cost to operate and how much money comes in (mostly from ads I assume). I guess one big issue is the brand. Ever since my old boss told me a few years back that Yahoo search was better, I associate Yahoo with idiots. And even though I do think Yahoo Answers is very useful like I mentioned before, the large number of retarded Yahoo Answers questions doesn't help with that idiot brand image problem. One random idea: its really expensive to build Android, iOS (especially), HTML5, Windows, OSX and Linux apps. Especially if you want to target all of the above. Maybe they could throw some money at Apple and Microsoft and make an application platform with WYSIWYG components, a little bit along the lines of Wordpress, but everything is a widget, and somehow make it work across all of those platforms, and built on Node.js (or something). I say throw money at Microsoft and Apple because they are always (as far as I can tell) spending money on throwing up roadblocks to prevent good cross-platform solutions from becoming popular and practical. One more random idea: I think the easiest way to compete as internet giant these days might be to create products that cross into the 'real' world. For example, the Google Project Glass project to me seems very exciting. So are things like 3d print-on-demand. Maybe Yahoo could build or promote a product/service along those lines? Of course, those product/service ideas are extremely expensive, challenging and risky, so I dunno. Other random idea: try to merge with one of the giant evil cable or media companies, such as Time Warner, if the government will let them. Then maybe if the CEO and people are persuasive enough to the Time Warner execs with all of the Yahoo customer numbers (like 700 million visitors per month), we could finally get HBO GO without having to buy cable. I mean I am not trying to make more gianter evil companies, but.. HBO GO without a cable subscription. Other random idea: start converting to mainly telecommute by telling most people they can work from home and then eventually shutting down campuses. Use that as a selling point for acquiring talent and also a way to save money. OK last last random idea: find a way to defeat ad block. Which would probably involve advertisements that actually weren't really advertisements somehow. Maybe something like reddit, or reddit+twitter+facebook, a way for people to recommend/vote up/review/rate products/services or apps, possibly filtered based on the relevance of the current page.. then maybe you just charge all of the advertisers a small fee to be eligible and don't let any of them pay more, so its entirely driven by consumers rather than the amounts companies are willing to pay. Anyway that was fun.
afhof 14y ago
A lot of the changes listed in this article are as the title suggests "Googley". I am not that surprised by these actions though. It's easy to get used to the free food and the Friday meetings and then miss them elsewhere. That said, if I was working at one of Yahoo's remote offices, I'd feel pretty left out of the free food / etc. Do HQ Engineers work any harder than the others?)
- Evbn 14y ago
  Whoa, did she really write off employees outside of HQ? Even Google feeds the plebes outside the Garden of Eden.
- codeonfire 14y ago
  Well, who's to say they even have the facilities or personnel for free food at other locations? If it's an office with a break room it probably isn't set up to serve hundreds of meals a day.
samstave 14y ago
This is great. You need to start with foundational changes that positively impact the culture and morale of the staff. Providing free food is a good basic that should happen. There needs to be a revitalization of the Yahoo staff if there is to be any success. Then you take those thousands of reinspirired/invigorated people and point them at a problem. Finding the right problem though is, well, the problem. Personally, I have said several times here on HN that Yahoo should take YCombinator as their new directional model. They should be seeking to foster startups in the valley VERY aggressively. Invest, incubate, incorporate. Take the growth of the startup communities and incorporate their innovations into the Yahoo brand...
trekkin 14y ago
A smart move.
bborud 14y ago
Ah, yes, the new Caesar is throwing bread to the plebeians to silence the restless. What I am wondering is when she is going to start feeding the top two tiers of management to the lions. After all, the shareholders need calming as well. Tick tock, tick-tock.
rmason 14y ago
Looks like Marissa has learned the lesson told by Steve Blank in his famous essay, the elves leave middle earth http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%e2%80%93-soda%e2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/ http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-eart... It has bought her time with the engineers while she decides what to do.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  I love this comment on the @sgblank post: When I started at mindspring as a startup (a dial up company) there were some very interesting rules. 1. Drug testing policy. If you have drugs we will test them. Classic stuff. That's the kind of culture I want to build at Fogbeam Labs when we get to the point of having employees. I like to say "let's be the Mötley Crüe of software companies." Hard partying, hard fighting, and ass kicking, that's the stuff we're going for - well, along with great software, world-class UX, and better integration of enterprise software than you can get anywhere else.
  - mgkimsal 14y ago
    I wish you success in that endeavour. The danger is that you might try to be "the Mötley Crüe of software companies" but end up being seen as "the Winger of web apps". I just had some Beavis and Butthead flashbacks when I read your post ;)
    - mindcrime 14y ago
      Hey, I like Winger!!! :-)
  - mjwalshe 14y ago
    Why would any comapny outside of List X (ie those working with SC and TS info) and a select number of govenment agencies have/need a drugs testing policy.
- zem 14y ago
  great point made in the comments: > But the point is that great engineers DON'T fight, they just move on. They aren't in the business of fixing companies, so they feel that anything that gets in the way of them creating is a huge waste of their time i've definitely seen companies where management expected individual engineers to come forward and "fight for their rights" if they had a problem - if bob was slightly more willing to address things and noted that tom, dick and harry were unhappy with the new changes, the response would be "well, then, why haven't i heard anything from them about it?", and bob would thereafter be seen as a bit of a troublemaker. mind you, no one thought that tom, dick and harry were happy, just that they were undoubtedly willing to believe what the ceo said about "everyone having to make sacrifices" if someone like bob didn't come along and stir things up.
guelo 14y ago
Yahoo gave up on being a technology leader when they killed their own search. If I was Mayer I would buy DuckDuckGo and say fuck it, we're taking on Google.
- joering2 14y ago
  I know that YC has a stake in the Duck and pardon my ignorance but what is so "racketish-science" here in DDG that Marissa and bunch of Google engineers couldn't come up with on their own terms, without having to reach out to Y! wallet?
  - biomechanica 14y ago
    I don't know if buying DDG would be a good investment. Yahoo! had a great search engine to begin with. There wasn't anything wrong with it, really. I think Yahoo! just got a bit carried away with the UI aspect of it. DDG prides itself on privacy and no tracking while giving good results. I don't think Yahoo! would be interested in keeping that tradition. Though, I could be wrong, of course. edit: was supposed to reply to the other guy... oops.. message still stands.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Scheme is racket science.
- bborud 14y ago
  Yahoo! gave up on being a technology leader long before search imploded on them and they were forced to give it up. They gave up on that in a very definitive way when a clueless board chose Terry Semel to run the company in the belief that they were a "media company".
- Tichy 14y ago
  I thought DuckDuckGo relies on Bing for searching?
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    Amongst others, Blekko also provides results for them on occasion (disclaimer I work for Blekko)
leeskye 14y ago
Definitely a smart decision by Marissa. The savings from feeding employees is definitely outweighed by the productivity and morale gained from satisfied employees. Make your employees feel proud and good to work there.
loceng 14y ago
I'd like to work for / with her.
- drgath 14y ago
  http://careers.yahoo.com/ http://careers.yahoo.com/
  - WestCoastJustin 14y ago
    I'd be surprised if there wasn't a hiring freeze right now while they asses what they have. If you look around this site there is all of 4 listings!!
    - dumitrue 14y ago
      I see at least 170 openings in Sunnyvale alone.
    - modarts 14y ago
      I think you were looking at the featured listings. Theres a ton more.
    - hobonumber1 14y ago
      Are you surprised yet?
    - drgath 14y ago
      Actually, Yahoo is hiring like crazy.
      - sown 14y ago
        Any areas in particular?
        drgath 14y ago
        Pretty much everywhere, but I know for a fact front-end (HTML/CSS/JS) is in high-demand. Just search for relevant terms on the careers site. Also, Flickr is hiring -> http://flickr.com/jobs/ http://flickr.com/jobs/
moron 14y ago
I tried to reach a Yahoo PR person for comment, but my phone remains unrung, even here in Israel. I don't understand this sentence. Is her phone more likely to ring because she's in Israel, or something?
- powera 14y ago
  The work week in Israel is Sunday through Thursday, so there probably were people in Yahoo! offices there.
  - moron 14y ago
    Ah, I see. Thanks.
  - ars 14y ago
    Sunday in Israel was the 9th of Av, which is a very solemn fast day. I doubt if anything at all was open. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisha_B%27Av http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisha_B%27Av
    - edanm 14y ago
      No, everything is mostly open on Sunday. Saturday night, which is when the 9th of Av actually started, most (but not all) things were closed, but Sunday everything is open again, especially businesses. Jewish Holidays go by the Hebrew Calendar, which counts days from Night to Night, not from Sunrise to Sunrise. So when the regular calendar says that the 9th of Av is on Sunday, the actual holiday is the evening of Saturday, then Sunday 'til evening.
    - maayank 14y ago
      9th of Av is less observed in general Israeli society, compared to other occasions. Other occasions (i.e. Jom kippur, shavuot) all/most (depends on the occasion) businesses would be closed, but not on 9th of Av.
- candeira 14y ago
  Mi guess is that her phone remains unrung, even [from] [there] in Israel, meaning she isn't getting a callback either from Yahoo US or from the local Israel office.
WestCoastJustin 14y ago
Seems like these are all moral boosting tweaks. Friday meetings that keep employees up-to-speed, free food, and updated swag. Gets people talking and they can see physical things happening! This is re-org 101. Make no mistake, the real changes that will turn Yahoo around, take months, if not years to get rolling.
- FaddiCat 14y ago
  >>> Free food is a bonus. It's also good for Yahoo. It encourages employees to stay on campus for longer, so Yahoo gets more value out of them.
FaddiCat 14y ago
I'd be more interested in what she's decided he WON'T change. What redeeming qualities does Yahoo have? (That's not a rhetorical question; I'm genuinely interested.)
- seunosewa 14y ago
  Lots of content that attracts lots of traffic from all over the world. The people that create that content.
meanJim 14y ago
I don't like Kara Swisher's tone throughout the whole article. Praises to Mayer for making smart moves.
dinkumthinkum 14y ago
I think it's obvious that Yahoo! needs some serious internal "disruption." I think the biggest thing they need is relevance. Incremental improvements to their search, email, etc I don't think will matter. If Yahoo's search started being 5% better than Google, by whatever metric you prefer, would anyone really care? I would still use Google. I think in many consumer's view, and even probably many of us, we have all just been wondering when this all Yahoo! thing was going to end, whether was from a buyout by MS or whatever. They need some kind of breakout product, surely they know this but we've been waiting for awhile now. Honestly, I think it's got to be something more than just acquisition. Honestly, just now I visited yahoo.com, (not yahoo answers or any of that, the homepage), I haven't done that in years. I'll say this, it's a strange place.
- bborud 14y ago
  I'll sum it up for you in one sentence: Marissa Mayer needs to figure out what Yahoo! is supposed to be good at. Right now Yahoo! isn't remarkably good at anything.
  - stevewilhelm 14y ago
    Just to name a few: on the consumer side, Yahoo! is remarkably good at Sports including Fantasy Football and Baseball, and on the technical side it's remarkably good at Hadoop.
    - bborud 14y ago
      It does an okay job with Hadoop. Parts of Hadoop are good (Zookeeper) and parts of it are well short of the mark (HDFS) and ought to have had more effort behind it years ago.
- azakai 14y ago
  > Incremental improvements to their search, email, etc I don't think will matter. If Yahoo's search started being 5% better than Google, by whatever metric you prefer, would anyone really care? I would still use Google. Yup, that's the issue. I actually tried Bing on a search this week - I was pretty surprised to see it returned better results, faster, than Google. But I still use Google like everyone else. Google owns that market, like Microsoft owns the desktop. > They need some kind of breakout product I hope Marissa already had a plan for what that would be before starting. Without such a product, I doubt Yahoo will survive.
csmeder 14y ago
At this point, in the year 2012, isn't this just called modern? Sure a decade ago google was the only one doing this. However, aren't most startups/competitive tech companies in the bay area offering free food? If Yahoo wants to compete for talent against the SF startups, facebook, google, etc. It seems like this isn't googley, its just part of the modern benefit package.
- Me1000 14y ago
  A lot of companies don't provide free food, Apple, and Nest to name a couple. Talent won't be attracted by free food, but what it will do is cause the morale to change. People already working there will start getting excited about these new changes. Things become a little more fun. When your employees have a higher morale, they feel better about working harder, and they become more proud about what they're working on. The new all-hands meetings will be key in that strategy. A good CEO and a great CEO can tell you the vision of the company and why it will succeed. But only a great CEO can make his or her employees feel inspired to do better work after those talks. The first signs that Yahoo is turning around will be seen on the streets of San Francisco and Sunnyvale. When yahoo hoodies and tshirts are being displayed as frequently as you see Google of Facebook swag, if the employees start showing they are _really_ proud of the company they work for, that will signal the earliest changes in Yahoo. Edit: spelling
  - Evbn 14y ago
    All hands meetings are morale boosting when they feature Oprah style handouts of fancy schwag. Business status reports, meh.
    - spullara 14y ago
      You are so wrong about this. Twitter copies google model and does this and it is amazing to have such communication.
    - Me1000 14y ago
      Sorry, but the people who only get excited with fancy hand outs won't be at Yahoo much longer if Marissa does her job right. She needs people who want to work long hours, and/or weekends. That kind of work ethic doesn't come from handouts, it comes from inspiring people around you to build something really awesome.
DanBC 14y ago
> Better search! Yahoo was known for collating links, while Google had a killer algorithm. But Google's drive to make the algorithm work all the time for everybody is causing some discontent. Power users are disappointed at (for example) the loss of +, and don't like the weird word substitutions and stemming that Google has introduced. And naive users are confused by overwhelming choice. They don't know the difference between the various sponsored links; they have no idea what a domain is so they aren't going to know if they're going to a trustworthy site or to scumbags. Imagine how nice it would be if you entered your programming specific terms into a search engine and got carefully selected links back. I don't know if free food is going to get that, but it's worth a try. EDIT: I've just visited the Yahoo page for the first time in many years. It is laughably hideous. Sorry for any Yahooers, but this version is even uglier than the 199x page (black on silver?).
breckinloggins 14y ago
So given all the hubbub lately I decided to visit Yahoo.com for the first time in years. I'm not really Yahoo's target audience, but my second-first impressions are: - That little "Make Yahoo! your homepage" thing that slides down and moves the rest of the content with it has got to go (especially considering there's a "Make Y! your homepage" link RIGHT below it). - Clicking on the dot in the exclamation point still does the "Yahoo!" jingle, which is nice, but I don't like the new jingle. It's too polished. Old one was better. - The actual search bar is a bit heavy and "2005 Web 2.0" looking, but I suppose it needs to be a little chunky to stand out from everything else on the page (and there's a lot). - Overall, I like the color scheme and design, but it still feels a bit "heavy". The fact that there's SO MUCH STUFF on the front page suggests that this real estate is a design-by-committee thing and that politics is heavily involved. There's so much stuff and it's packed so tightly together that I really can't decide what I want to look at. - The Olympics banner is neat. - The top news rotator is OK, but it's a little clumsy. - The subsections, like Yahoo! News and Yahoo! TV, feel too different from each other and too different from the main site. - Speaking of target audience, the "Trending Now" section is neat, but I'm not sure I like what it's saying. Between that, the "Must-See Videos on Yahoo!", and the "Most Popular" section below it, I get the feeling that I just stepped into a middle-class hair salon. I'm not trying to be elitist, it's just that this site really seems to scream "late 30-something suburbian white woman with a minivan" in a way that most other sites don't, so I don't feel very welcome here. Shouldn't the front page to one of the world's most recognized online brands start out a little more neutral and slowly BECOME about whatever it is you're usually interested in? ArsTechnica does a good job of this, building up a "Your Stories" section based on stuff you've clicked on an (presumably) how long you stuck around after you clicked. - A little more nitpicky, but I think it's another indication of Yahoo!'s most prime real-estate being driven by corporate politics and ladder-climbing (because I'm going to give the page designer a benefit of the doubt): take a look at all the section headings. You have "YAHOO! SITES", "TRENDING NOW", "MUST-SEE VIDEOS ON YAHOO!", "MOST POPULAR", "POLL", "FAVORITES". There doesn't seem to be much consistency in the color or font size with these. - So, yeah, "Favorites". How come I just NOW (within the last 30 seconds) found that? It's way below the fold of the sites list. Aren't my favorites kind of important? Shouldn't they be above "Yahoo! Sites"? And why are they already populated? Yahoo! on FB, Yahoo! on Twitter? How are those my favorites? I never told you I liked those... These are the kind of things that make it a little TOO obvious that I, humble visitor, am the product being sold. - The bottom footer (no, not the real footer, the footer above that) seems redundant. "More Yahoo! Sites" contains only slightly different content than the "Yahoo! Site" area, and there's already a way from right there to see more. If you want to promote new or underperforming sub-sites, why not try a sites recommendation engine based on the stuff you've visited? Follow Yahoo could be placed elsewhere, and the "About Yahoo" stuff can certainly be combined and replace the "About our Ads" thing on the real footer. - When performing an actual search, the results aren't too bad (they're powered by Bing, which isn't wonderful but it isn't terrible either). In fact, the search listings are a lot less cluttered than what Google's results have become.... it's almost refreshing.
deleted 14y ago
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ntkachov 14y ago
Yahoo still has some buying power with serious engineers. I'm not sure what their plan is but cool projects + good perks are usually a sure fire way to get good engineers. I really hope that she turns the place around and makes another Google.
ramanujan 14y ago
One strategy for Yahoo: Turn Google's strengths into weaknesses by opening up all of Yahoo's products (Search, Mail, Finance, Maps, Sports, News) to developers to be maximally programmable. Allow developers to monetize in any way they feel like (aside from fraud) and let them link together apps in creative mashups. This links together YQL, Yahoo Pipes, YUI, BOSS, and several other existing Yahoo technologies into Yahoo as the platform for the Open Web. If Marissa wanted to really push hard on this: buy Blekko, take a big stake in Github, buy Mozilla, and possibly buy Meteor and/or DerbyJS. That gives you a tech stack which is pretty strong in search, best of class among developers, pretty strong in browsers, and the future of web development. Then let developers knit the pieces together and give them contractual terms which stipulate you won't go up the stack at them like Facebook, Apple, and Twitter did if their apps are successful. Basically, if Apple represents ultimate centralization and Google is somewhat open, turn Yahoo into the ultra open, monetizable platform for the web. They have the traffic, they could make this a very attractive proposition for developers.
- filip01 14y ago
  For the record, Mozilla is a 501(c)(3).
  - robryan 14y ago
    Maybe just try and get actively involved in Mozilla.
  - sxp 14y ago
    That is the Mozilla Foundation. There is also the for-profit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation
    - capnrefsmmat 14y ago
      ...which is owned by the Foundation. I doubt the Foundation will hand it over.
    - mburns 14y ago
wisty 14y ago
It sounds good. This may give her the moral authority to make less popular changes down the track - she's signalling that she wants to make the place like Google, which will make the troops more sympathetic to anything she does.
orijing 14y ago
Just curious, how much Google stock does she have, and does that affect what strategies she can pursue with Yahoo? i.e. it may encourage a more cooperative stance with Google than a competitive one, even if the latter is better for Yahoo individually.
- Evbn 14y ago
  I assume and hope she would divest from Google so that more of her net worth is contingent upon Yahoo's success more than Google's.
iba 14y ago
I wonder if Marissa will try to maneuver Yahoo for a possible acquisition by Google.
- noamsml 14y ago
  I doubt it. If Mayer wanted to play second fiddle to Page, she'd have stayed at Google.
joshfraser 14y ago
Smart move. This helps her make friends w/ existing engineers within the company while also making it easier to recuit new talent -- two things she's going to need desperately.
voidfiles 14y ago
Free food is a big idea. As a one time Yahoo, I was shocked. This shows to me that Mayer is going to be different. I am not sure if every CEO previous to her had this choice, but none of them did it. It either proves that the board has given her a lot of leeway, or all the others have been weak kneed. Seriously, food is a big deal, someone at my orientation asked a VP why we didn't get free food. She answered by explaining that the only people who liked the free food were the employees, and that share holders didn't like the free food, and that we work for the shareholders. With that everyone clapped. I remembered at the time that free food sounded good, especially because I was about the become a Yahoo employee. So, I hope this is like the Canary in the coal mine, but in reverse.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  Wow, what an awful, awful answer that was from the VP. The shareholders probably didn't like her salary either, did it get cut?
- franze 14y ago
  that's the worst possible answer the VP could have made. this comment alone would be enough reason to quit any job. employees work for the company. every company has a goal. employees work (hard) to push the company to reach that goal. shareholders invest in that goal. it's the goal that matters, not the shareholders monetary desires. said that, i dont know if Y! has any goals.
bavidar 14y ago
Ahh I get it. Shes prepping Yahoo for a Google Takeover. Makes sense...
madrona 14y ago
Yahoo's front page is 600kb and finishes rendering after about a second. Google is 17kb, and renders in a tenth of that. More Googlification awaits.
- ajays 14y ago
  Apples and oranges. Try comparing http://search.yahoo.com/ http://search.yahoo.com/ with http://www.google.com/ http://www.google.com/ , difference isn't as large. Here's what I get: curl -s http://www.google.com/ | wc 20 397 14433 curl -s http://search.yahoo.com/ | wc 1 363 12616
  - madrona 14y ago
    You will need much more than the HTML for the pages to be usable.
adrianwaj 14y ago
I bet she'll do nothing more than turn Yahoo into a well-organized and well-fed train wreck. She really needs to bet on something big, not just get people into nice lifeboats. Maybe Scott McNealy would've been a better hire.
pmoehring 14y ago
Wow, the smugness and adversity to Marissa Mayer is really evident here. Did these two have a run-in in the past or is that just KS's style of reporting?
debacle 14y ago
I can't help but feel that this is a bit cargo cult. I'll wait to see the results.
vampirechicken 14y ago
When did yahoo become people magazine?

223 points by drgath 14y ago

I know people always make fun of Yahoo Answers, with good reason, but I think that when it comes down to it, Yahoo Answers is one of the web's most important resources, just because there are so many questions and answers that it covers quite a lot of popular topics. True that a lot of it is stupid or nonsense, but there is actually also a lot of useful and timely information in there. I also remember using the Yahoo fantasy sports thing and it seemed pretty good to me. And to be honest the Yahoo mail program is really attractive looking to me and very functional. Yahoo Groups is extremely useful also. I guess however its hard to compete with things like gmail, reddit and meetup.com. So anyway since half of the comments in this thread are basically going on a 'pretend you are the new CEO of Yahoo, what would you do' thing, I want to play also. Actually Yahoo has so much going on, its kind of hard to NOT want to play that game. One thing to focus on making Yahoo Answers better. Maybe more ajaxy and realtime. Maybe make the app better (ask questions? voice input?). Maybe even do a deal with stackoverflow or something (although stackoverflow users might not appreciate that). It seems like they have a ton of useful applications and other stuff. I forgot one: Yahoo Games. I guess the hard part is making money from all of those things. I think to figure out what to do I would need to know how much each of those different parts of Yahoo cost to operate and how much money comes in (mostly from ads I assume). I guess one big issue is the brand. Ever since my old boss told me a few years back that Yahoo search was better, I associate Yahoo with idiots. And even though I do think Yahoo Answers is very useful like I mentioned before, the large number of retarded Yahoo Answers questions doesn't help with that idiot brand image problem. One random idea: its really expensive to build Android, iOS (especially), HTML5, Windows, OSX and Linux apps. Especially if you want to target all of the above. Maybe they could throw some money at Apple and Microsoft and make an application platform with WYSIWYG components, a little bit along the lines of Wordpress, but everything is a widget, and somehow make it work across all of those platforms, and built on Node.js (or something). I say throw money at Microsoft and Apple because they are always (as far as I can tell) spending money on throwing up roadblocks to prevent good cross-platform solutions from becoming popular and practical. One more random idea: I think the easiest way to compete as internet giant these days might be to create products that cross into the 'real' world. For example, the Google Project Glass project to me seems very exciting. So are things like 3d print-on-demand. Maybe Yahoo could build or promote a product/service along those lines? Of course, those product/service ideas are extremely expensive, challenging and risky, so I dunno. Other random idea: try to merge with one of the giant evil cable or media companies, such as Time Warner, if the government will let them. Then maybe if the CEO and people are persuasive enough to the Time Warner execs with all of the Yahoo customer numbers (like 700 million visitors per month), we could finally get HBO GO without having to buy cable. I mean I am not trying to make more gianter evil companies, but.. HBO GO without a cable subscription. Other random idea: start converting to mainly telecommute by telling most people they can work from home and then eventually shutting down campuses. Use that as a selling point for acquiring talent and also a way to save money. OK last last random idea: find a way to defeat ad block. Which would probably involve advertisements that actually weren't really advertisements somehow. Maybe something like reddit, or reddit+twitter+facebook, a way for people to recommend/vote up/review/rate products/services or apps, possibly filtered based on the relevance of the current page.. then maybe you just charge all of the advertisers a small fee to be eligible and don't let any of them pay more, so its entirely driven by consumers rather than the amounts companies are willing to pay. Anyway that was fun.

afhof 14y ago

A lot of the changes listed in this article are as the title suggests "Googley". I am not that surprised by these actions though. It's easy to get used to the free food and the Friday meetings and then miss them elsewhere. That said, if I was working at one of Yahoo's remote offices, I'd feel pretty left out of the free food / etc. Do HQ Engineers work any harder than the others?)

Evbn 14y ago
Whoa, did she really write off employees outside of HQ? Even Google feeds the plebes outside the Garden of Eden.
codeonfire 14y ago
Well, who's to say they even have the facilities or personnel for free food at other locations? If it's an office with a break room it probably isn't set up to serve hundreds of meals a day.

samstave 14y ago

This is great. You need to start with foundational changes that positively impact the culture and morale of the staff. Providing free food is a good basic that should happen. There needs to be a revitalization of the Yahoo staff if there is to be any success. Then you take those thousands of reinspirired/invigorated people and point them at a problem. Finding the right problem though is, well, the problem. Personally, I have said several times here on HN that Yahoo should take YCombinator as their new directional model. They should be seeking to foster startups in the valley VERY aggressively. Invest, incubate, incorporate. Take the growth of the startup communities and incorporate their innovations into the Yahoo brand...

trekkin 14y ago

A smart move.

bborud 14y ago

Ah, yes, the new Caesar is throwing bread to the plebeians to silence the restless. What I am wondering is when she is going to start feeding the top two tiers of management to the lions. After all, the shareholders need calming as well. Tick tock, tick-tock.

rmason 14y ago

Looks like Marissa has learned the lesson told by Steve Blank in his famous essay, the elves leave middle earth http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%e2%80%93-soda%e2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/ http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-eart... It has bought her time with the engineers while she decides what to do.

mindcrime 14y ago
I love this comment on the @sgblank post: When I started at mindspring as a startup (a dial up company) there were some very interesting rules. 1. Drug testing policy. If you have drugs we will test them. Classic stuff. That's the kind of culture I want to build at Fogbeam Labs when we get to the point of having employees. I like to say "let's be the Mötley Crüe of software companies." Hard partying, hard fighting, and ass kicking, that's the stuff we're going for - well, along with great software, world-class UX, and better integration of enterprise software than you can get anywhere else.
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  I wish you success in that endeavour. The danger is that you might try to be "the Mötley Crüe of software companies" but end up being seen as "the Winger of web apps". I just had some Beavis and Butthead flashbacks when I read your post ;)
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    Hey, I like Winger!!! :-)
- mjwalshe 14y ago
  Why would any comapny outside of List X (ie those working with SC and TS info) and a select number of govenment agencies have/need a drugs testing policy.
zem 14y ago
great point made in the comments: > But the point is that great engineers DON'T fight, they just move on. They aren't in the business of fixing companies, so they feel that anything that gets in the way of them creating is a huge waste of their time i've definitely seen companies where management expected individual engineers to come forward and "fight for their rights" if they had a problem - if bob was slightly more willing to address things and noted that tom, dick and harry were unhappy with the new changes, the response would be "well, then, why haven't i heard anything from them about it?", and bob would thereafter be seen as a bit of a troublemaker. mind you, no one thought that tom, dick and harry were happy, just that they were undoubtedly willing to believe what the ceo said about "everyone having to make sacrifices" if someone like bob didn't come along and stir things up.

guelo 14y ago

Yahoo gave up on being a technology leader when they killed their own search. If I was Mayer I would buy DuckDuckGo and say fuck it, we're taking on Google.

joering2 14y ago
I know that YC has a stake in the Duck and pardon my ignorance but what is so "racketish-science" here in DDG that Marissa and bunch of Google engineers couldn't come up with on their own terms, without having to reach out to Y! wallet?
- biomechanica 14y ago
  I don't know if buying DDG would be a good investment. Yahoo! had a great search engine to begin with. There wasn't anything wrong with it, really. I think Yahoo! just got a bit carried away with the UI aspect of it. DDG prides itself on privacy and no tracking while giving good results. I don't think Yahoo! would be interested in keeping that tradition. Though, I could be wrong, of course. edit: was supposed to reply to the other guy... oops.. message still stands.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Scheme is racket science.
bborud 14y ago
Yahoo! gave up on being a technology leader long before search imploded on them and they were forced to give it up. They gave up on that in a very definitive way when a clueless board chose Terry Semel to run the company in the belief that they were a "media company".
Tichy 14y ago
I thought DuckDuckGo relies on Bing for searching?
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  Amongst others, Blekko also provides results for them on occasion (disclaimer I work for Blekko)

leeskye 14y ago

Definitely a smart decision by Marissa. The savings from feeding employees is definitely outweighed by the productivity and morale gained from satisfied employees. Make your employees feel proud and good to work there.

loceng 14y ago

I'd like to work for / with her.

drgath 14y ago
http://careers.yahoo.com/ http://careers.yahoo.com/
- WestCoastJustin 14y ago
  I'd be surprised if there wasn't a hiring freeze right now while they asses what they have. If you look around this site there is all of 4 listings!!
  - dumitrue 14y ago
    I see at least 170 openings in Sunnyvale alone.
  - modarts 14y ago
    I think you were looking at the featured listings. Theres a ton more.
  - hobonumber1 14y ago
    Are you surprised yet?
  - drgath 14y ago
    Actually, Yahoo is hiring like crazy.
    - sown 14y ago
      Any areas in particular?
      - drgath 14y ago
        Pretty much everywhere, but I know for a fact front-end (HTML/CSS/JS) is in high-demand. Just search for relevant terms on the careers site. Also, Flickr is hiring -> http://flickr.com/jobs/ http://flickr.com/jobs/

moron 14y ago

I tried to reach a Yahoo PR person for comment, but my phone remains unrung, even here in Israel. I don't understand this sentence. Is her phone more likely to ring because she's in Israel, or something?

powera 14y ago
The work week in Israel is Sunday through Thursday, so there probably were people in Yahoo! offices there.
- moron 14y ago
  Ah, I see. Thanks.
- ars 14y ago
  Sunday in Israel was the 9th of Av, which is a very solemn fast day. I doubt if anything at all was open. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisha_B%27Av http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisha_B%27Av
  - edanm 14y ago
    No, everything is mostly open on Sunday. Saturday night, which is when the 9th of Av actually started, most (but not all) things were closed, but Sunday everything is open again, especially businesses. Jewish Holidays go by the Hebrew Calendar, which counts days from Night to Night, not from Sunrise to Sunrise. So when the regular calendar says that the 9th of Av is on Sunday, the actual holiday is the evening of Saturday, then Sunday 'til evening.
  - maayank 14y ago
    9th of Av is less observed in general Israeli society, compared to other occasions. Other occasions (i.e. Jom kippur, shavuot) all/most (depends on the occasion) businesses would be closed, but not on 9th of Av.
candeira 14y ago
Mi guess is that her phone remains unrung, even [from] [there] in Israel, meaning she isn't getting a callback either from Yahoo US or from the local Israel office.

WestCoastJustin 14y ago

Seems like these are all moral boosting tweaks. Friday meetings that keep employees up-to-speed, free food, and updated swag. Gets people talking and they can see physical things happening! This is re-org 101. Make no mistake, the real changes that will turn Yahoo around, take months, if not years to get rolling.

FaddiCat 14y ago
>>> Free food is a bonus. It's also good for Yahoo. It encourages employees to stay on campus for longer, so Yahoo gets more value out of them.

FaddiCat 14y ago

I'd be more interested in what she's decided he WON'T change. What redeeming qualities does Yahoo have? (That's not a rhetorical question; I'm genuinely interested.)

seunosewa 14y ago
Lots of content that attracts lots of traffic from all over the world. The people that create that content.

meanJim 14y ago

I don't like Kara Swisher's tone throughout the whole article. Praises to Mayer for making smart moves.

dinkumthinkum 14y ago

I think it's obvious that Yahoo! needs some serious internal "disruption." I think the biggest thing they need is relevance. Incremental improvements to their search, email, etc I don't think will matter. If Yahoo's search started being 5% better than Google, by whatever metric you prefer, would anyone really care? I would still use Google. I think in many consumer's view, and even probably many of us, we have all just been wondering when this all Yahoo! thing was going to end, whether was from a buyout by MS or whatever. They need some kind of breakout product, surely they know this but we've been waiting for awhile now. Honestly, I think it's got to be something more than just acquisition. Honestly, just now I visited yahoo.com, (not yahoo answers or any of that, the homepage), I haven't done that in years. I'll say this, it's a strange place.

bborud 14y ago
I'll sum it up for you in one sentence: Marissa Mayer needs to figure out what Yahoo! is supposed to be good at. Right now Yahoo! isn't remarkably good at anything.
- stevewilhelm 14y ago
  Just to name a few: on the consumer side, Yahoo! is remarkably good at Sports including Fantasy Football and Baseball, and on the technical side it's remarkably good at Hadoop.
  - bborud 14y ago
    It does an okay job with Hadoop. Parts of Hadoop are good (Zookeeper) and parts of it are well short of the mark (HDFS) and ought to have had more effort behind it years ago.
azakai 14y ago
> Incremental improvements to their search, email, etc I don't think will matter. If Yahoo's search started being 5% better than Google, by whatever metric you prefer, would anyone really care? I would still use Google. Yup, that's the issue. I actually tried Bing on a search this week - I was pretty surprised to see it returned better results, faster, than Google. But I still use Google like everyone else. Google owns that market, like Microsoft owns the desktop. > They need some kind of breakout product I hope Marissa already had a plan for what that would be before starting. Without such a product, I doubt Yahoo will survive.

csmeder 14y ago

At this point, in the year 2012, isn't this just called modern? Sure a decade ago google was the only one doing this. However, aren't most startups/competitive tech companies in the bay area offering free food? If Yahoo wants to compete for talent against the SF startups, facebook, google, etc. It seems like this isn't googley, its just part of the modern benefit package.

Me1000 14y ago
A lot of companies don't provide free food, Apple, and Nest to name a couple. Talent won't be attracted by free food, but what it will do is cause the morale to change. People already working there will start getting excited about these new changes. Things become a little more fun. When your employees have a higher morale, they feel better about working harder, and they become more proud about what they're working on. The new all-hands meetings will be key in that strategy. A good CEO and a great CEO can tell you the vision of the company and why it will succeed. But only a great CEO can make his or her employees feel inspired to do better work after those talks. The first signs that Yahoo is turning around will be seen on the streets of San Francisco and Sunnyvale. When yahoo hoodies and tshirts are being displayed as frequently as you see Google of Facebook swag, if the employees start showing they are _really_ proud of the company they work for, that will signal the earliest changes in Yahoo. Edit: spelling
- Evbn 14y ago
  All hands meetings are morale boosting when they feature Oprah style handouts of fancy schwag. Business status reports, meh.
  - spullara 14y ago
    You are so wrong about this. Twitter copies google model and does this and it is amazing to have such communication.
  - Me1000 14y ago
    Sorry, but the people who only get excited with fancy hand outs won't be at Yahoo much longer if Marissa does her job right. She needs people who want to work long hours, and/or weekends. That kind of work ethic doesn't come from handouts, it comes from inspiring people around you to build something really awesome.

DanBC 14y ago

> Better search! Yahoo was known for collating links, while Google had a killer algorithm. But Google's drive to make the algorithm work all the time for everybody is causing some discontent. Power users are disappointed at (for example) the loss of +, and don't like the weird word substitutions and stemming that Google has introduced. And naive users are confused by overwhelming choice. They don't know the difference between the various sponsored links; they have no idea what a domain is so they aren't going to know if they're going to a trustworthy site or to scumbags. Imagine how nice it would be if you entered your programming specific terms into a search engine and got carefully selected links back. I don't know if free food is going to get that, but it's worth a try. EDIT: I've just visited the Yahoo page for the first time in many years. It is laughably hideous. Sorry for any Yahooers, but this version is even uglier than the 199x page (black on silver?).

breckinloggins 14y ago

So given all the hubbub lately I decided to visit Yahoo.com for the first time in years. I'm not really Yahoo's target audience, but my second-first impressions are: - That little "Make Yahoo! your homepage" thing that slides down and moves the rest of the content with it has got to go (especially considering there's a "Make Y! your homepage" link RIGHT below it). - Clicking on the dot in the exclamation point still does the "Yahoo!" jingle, which is nice, but I don't like the new jingle. It's too polished. Old one was better. - The actual search bar is a bit heavy and "2005 Web 2.0" looking, but I suppose it needs to be a little chunky to stand out from everything else on the page (and there's a lot). - Overall, I like the color scheme and design, but it still feels a bit "heavy". The fact that there's SO MUCH STUFF on the front page suggests that this real estate is a design-by-committee thing and that politics is heavily involved. There's so much stuff and it's packed so tightly together that I really can't decide what I want to look at. - The Olympics banner is neat. - The top news rotator is OK, but it's a little clumsy. - The subsections, like Yahoo! News and Yahoo! TV, feel too different from each other and too different from the main site. - Speaking of target audience, the "Trending Now" section is neat, but I'm not sure I like what it's saying. Between that, the "Must-See Videos on Yahoo!", and the "Most Popular" section below it, I get the feeling that I just stepped into a middle-class hair salon. I'm not trying to be elitist, it's just that this site really seems to scream "late 30-something suburbian white woman with a minivan" in a way that most other sites don't, so I don't feel very welcome here. Shouldn't the front page to one of the world's most recognized online brands start out a little more neutral and slowly BECOME about whatever it is you're usually interested in? ArsTechnica does a good job of this, building up a "Your Stories" section based on stuff you've clicked on an (presumably) how long you stuck around after you clicked. - A little more nitpicky, but I think it's another indication of Yahoo!'s most prime real-estate being driven by corporate politics and ladder-climbing (because I'm going to give the page designer a benefit of the doubt): take a look at all the section headings. You have "YAHOO! SITES", "TRENDING NOW", "MUST-SEE VIDEOS ON YAHOO!", "MOST POPULAR", "POLL", "FAVORITES". There doesn't seem to be much consistency in the color or font size with these. - So, yeah, "Favorites". How come I just NOW (within the last 30 seconds) found that? It's way below the fold of the sites list. Aren't my favorites kind of important? Shouldn't they be above "Yahoo! Sites"? And why are they already populated? Yahoo! on FB, Yahoo! on Twitter? How are those my favorites? I never told you I liked those... These are the kind of things that make it a little TOO obvious that I, humble visitor, am the product being sold. - The bottom footer (no, not the real footer, the footer above that) seems redundant. "More Yahoo! Sites" contains only slightly different content than the "Yahoo! Site" area, and there's already a way from right there to see more. If you want to promote new or underperforming sub-sites, why not try a sites recommendation engine based on the stuff you've visited? Follow Yahoo could be placed elsewhere, and the "About Yahoo" stuff can certainly be combined and replace the "About our Ads" thing on the real footer. - When performing an actual search, the results aren't too bad (they're powered by Bing, which isn't wonderful but it isn't terrible either). In fact, the search listings are a lot less cluttered than what Google's results have become.... it's almost refreshing.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

ntkachov 14y ago

Yahoo still has some buying power with serious engineers. I'm not sure what their plan is but cool projects + good perks are usually a sure fire way to get good engineers. I really hope that she turns the place around and makes another Google.

ramanujan 14y ago

One strategy for Yahoo: Turn Google's strengths into weaknesses by opening up all of Yahoo's products (Search, Mail, Finance, Maps, Sports, News) to developers to be maximally programmable. Allow developers to monetize in any way they feel like (aside from fraud) and let them link together apps in creative mashups. This links together YQL, Yahoo Pipes, YUI, BOSS, and several other existing Yahoo technologies into Yahoo as the platform for the Open Web. If Marissa wanted to really push hard on this: buy Blekko, take a big stake in Github, buy Mozilla, and possibly buy Meteor and/or DerbyJS. That gives you a tech stack which is pretty strong in search, best of class among developers, pretty strong in browsers, and the future of web development. Then let developers knit the pieces together and give them contractual terms which stipulate you won't go up the stack at them like Facebook, Apple, and Twitter did if their apps are successful. Basically, if Apple represents ultimate centralization and Google is somewhat open, turn Yahoo into the ultra open, monetizable platform for the web. They have the traffic, they could make this a very attractive proposition for developers.

filip01 14y ago
For the record, Mozilla is a 501(c)(3).
- robryan 14y ago
  Maybe just try and get actively involved in Mozilla.
- sxp 14y ago
  That is the Mozilla Foundation. There is also the for-profit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation
  - capnrefsmmat 14y ago
    ...which is owned by the Foundation. I doubt the Foundation will hand it over.
  - mburns 14y ago

wisty 14y ago

It sounds good. This may give her the moral authority to make less popular changes down the track - she's signalling that she wants to make the place like Google, which will make the troops more sympathetic to anything she does.

orijing 14y ago

Just curious, how much Google stock does she have, and does that affect what strategies she can pursue with Yahoo? i.e. it may encourage a more cooperative stance with Google than a competitive one, even if the latter is better for Yahoo individually.

Evbn 14y ago
I assume and hope she would divest from Google so that more of her net worth is contingent upon Yahoo's success more than Google's.

iba 14y ago

I wonder if Marissa will try to maneuver Yahoo for a possible acquisition by Google.

noamsml 14y ago
I doubt it. If Mayer wanted to play second fiddle to Page, she'd have stayed at Google.

joshfraser 14y ago

Smart move. This helps her make friends w/ existing engineers within the company while also making it easier to recuit new talent -- two things she's going to need desperately.

voidfiles 14y ago

Free food is a big idea. As a one time Yahoo, I was shocked. This shows to me that Mayer is going to be different. I am not sure if every CEO previous to her had this choice, but none of them did it. It either proves that the board has given her a lot of leeway, or all the others have been weak kneed. Seriously, food is a big deal, someone at my orientation asked a VP why we didn't get free food. She answered by explaining that the only people who liked the free food were the employees, and that share holders didn't like the free food, and that we work for the shareholders. With that everyone clapped. I remembered at the time that free food sounded good, especially because I was about the become a Yahoo employee. So, I hope this is like the Canary in the coal mine, but in reverse.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
Wow, what an awful, awful answer that was from the VP. The shareholders probably didn't like her salary either, did it get cut?
franze 14y ago
that's the worst possible answer the VP could have made. this comment alone would be enough reason to quit any job. employees work for the company. every company has a goal. employees work (hard) to push the company to reach that goal. shareholders invest in that goal. it's the goal that matters, not the shareholders monetary desires. said that, i dont know if Y! has any goals.

bavidar 14y ago

Ahh I get it. Shes prepping Yahoo for a Google Takeover. Makes sense...

madrona 14y ago

Yahoo's front page is 600kb and finishes rendering after about a second. Google is 17kb, and renders in a tenth of that. More Googlification awaits.

ajays 14y ago
Apples and oranges. Try comparing http://search.yahoo.com/ http://search.yahoo.com/ with http://www.google.com/ http://www.google.com/ , difference isn't as large. Here's what I get: curl -s http://www.google.com/ | wc 20 397 14433 curl -s http://search.yahoo.com/ | wc 1 363 12616
- madrona 14y ago
  You will need much more than the HTML for the pages to be usable.

adrianwaj 14y ago

I bet she'll do nothing more than turn Yahoo into a well-organized and well-fed train wreck. She really needs to bet on something big, not just get people into nice lifeboats. Maybe Scott McNealy would've been a better hire.

pmoehring 14y ago

Wow, the smugness and adversity to Marissa Mayer is really evident here. Did these two have a run-in in the past or is that just KS's style of reporting?

debacle 14y ago

I can't help but feel that this is a bit cargo cult. I'll wait to see the results.

vampirechicken 14y ago

When did yahoo become people magazine?