4 ms·

Marissa Mayer has been on a shopping spree, but is there any sign of a strategy?

36 points by alexlitov 13y ago

tater 13y ago
The strategy is to appease wall street and shareholders. Doesn't matter what their plan is or what they do, as long as they have a plan and do something. While somewhat rare for publicly traded companies, Amazon has shown that companies can float while prioritizing long term strategies above everything else.
hzay 13y ago
Somehow I find it hard to believe that if it had been Zuckerberg or Larry Page or any other guy, this title would have been chosen.
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- dangrossman 13y ago
  Two minutes of Googling will find you plenty of writeups of companies with male CEOs on "shopping sprees". Have fun with the "intitle" operator, it's used there too.
- tzs 13y ago
  Steve Jobs: http://www.fastcompany.com/1563818/feisty-steve-jobs-ponders-40b-shopping-spree-apple-shareholder-meeting http://www.fastcompany.com/1563818/feisty-steve-jobs-ponders... http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/978263-tribbda/197291-the-steve-jobs-shopping-spree-that-isn-t http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/978263-tribbda/197291-the-... Bill Gates: http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1997-01-12/bill-gatess-quiet-shopping-spree http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1997-01-12/bill-gatess-q... Jeff Bezos: http://gawker.com/287019/jeff-bezos-restarts-amazons-shopping-spree http://gawker.com/287019/jeff-bezos-restarts-amazons-shoppin... Larry Page: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-google-investor-apr-12-2011-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-google-investor-apr-12-20... There are also plenty where a company is named rather than the CEO, but the CEO at the time is male. For example, HP: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/h-p-s-pricey-shopping-spree/ http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/h-p-s-pricey-shopping... http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/13/hp-continues-shopping-spree-buys-security-software-company-arcsight-for-1-5-billion-in-cash/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/13/hp-continues-shopping-spree... http://markets.cbsnews.com/cbsnews/news/read/14673193/hp_continues_shopping_spree http://markets.cbsnews.com/cbsnews/news/read/14673193/hp_con... http://qz.com/29535/autonomy-is-just-the-latest-bad-egg-in-a-misguided-hp-shopping-spree/ http://qz.com/29535/autonomy-is-just-the-latest-bad-egg-in-a... http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/09/13/hp-acquiring-arcsight-in-ongoing-security-shopping-spree/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/09/13/hp-acqu... There are many more, for many companies.
- dkrich 13y ago
  People who write these types of comments do more to set back gender equality than anything written about the subjects themselves. If the subject of the story were a guy would the thought of sexism even cross your mind or would you just, ya know, evaluate the story on its merits?
  - LaGrange 13y ago
    If the subject of the story were a guy would the thought of sexism even cross your mind No, because it wouldn't make any sense. Now, in this specific case the criticism turns out to be unfounded, but being suspicious of word choice is perfectly reasonable, especially considered that Mayer did face a lot of unfounded criticism that was clearly gender based. Even more so when the "lack of strategy" here smells like a ton of FUD. Lots of startups getting acqui-hired, for a company that wants to take a risk and seek a fundamental change. Even hiring Mayer herself seems like a part of that strategy.
  - hzay 13y ago
    I was mistaken and there's no way to indicate that in the comment now, but your reply is way out of line and ironically a good example of harmful stereotyping ("people who write these type of comments"). Also, my comment had nothing to do with the story and everything to do with the title.
    - dkrich 13y ago
      Sorry that you feel that way, but since you made a comment which called into question the validity of the article and the character of the author without any evidence or apparent research to prove its validity, I think calling into question your assumptions and the potential harm they cause to be perfectly fair. It's not right for me to generalize, so I should have said "These types of comments..." but my point still stands.
thorum 13y ago
If this were any male CEO doing all these acquisitions, would the author of this article have written about him going on a "shopping spree"? I kind of doubt it. Edit: Criticism retracted - searching around in Google, it looks like this is a common phrase when referring to companies that make a lot of purchases in a short period. Apologies to the author for implying something negative.
- nonsexism 13y ago
  Pretty sure the answer is YES. I do wish people here especially would stop looking for sexism where there is none. It just shows how sexist YOU are. It's like people who call a brochure racist if it doesn't have every single possible race on the front cover.
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    - nonsexism 13y ago
      No. It should be utterly clear to anyone with half a brain (And without sexism hangups) that "Shopping spree" is used all the time in the media, for either sex, to describe...... guess what?!!!..... a shopping spree!
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- guttermaw 13y ago
deleted 13y ago
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pavs 13y ago
I think the strategy is to get as many new decent developers outside the yahoo echo chambers, in an effort to change the working culture inside the company. For many years Yahoo suffered from mismanagement of CEO with short term goal to appease shareholders as opposed to building a company based on strong workforce and values. Despite all the PR speech by the previous CEO, I never felt that the previous leadership really knew what the hell they were doing. One of the first thing Mayer had to do was stop the culture rot within the company, and you will see that a lot of her decisions, whether its buying up other companies and making new rules around favorable working conditions, is targeted on building a strong group of core developers. This obviously takes a lot of time, there is no magic bullet to fix culture rot. Mayer is from Google school of thought, so she knows a thing or two on how good working environment works. You will see that while Google has a strong leadership to guide the company, a lot of its products and services started from and driven by not the leadership, but their developers on their 20% project. So to put it in short, Yahoo is not in a position like Google where they can dictate long term strategy without getting its bases in order and fix decades of rotting. I think in the next 12 months or so will be interesting time to see what comes out of Yahoo.
- badclient 13y ago
  I think the strategy is to get as many new decent developers outside the yahoo echo chambers, in an effort to change the working culture inside the company. Unless I'm wrong, qwiki had 9 employees. To pay ~$5M/developer seems incredibly expensive. Yahoo could simply offer $500,000/yr and I'd reckon they'd attract talent at same caliber or better than qwiki. In that sense, this seems like a disastrous acquisition if purely for talent.
  - pavs 13y ago
    I am not going to pretent to know how hiring process on big companies like yahoo/google works but here are some of the reasons I think for a company in Yahoo's position acqui-hire is the best way to go: - In general, top developer are more likely to work for more interesting companies with interesting problems to solve with good pay to boot. I think most good developer would rather work for Google or their own company than work for Yahoo. Since mooching top developers from Google is out of the question, acqui-hiring seems to be the next best option. - You can't play with 500k/yr strategy because they are other top companies with deeper pocket and can throw more money at employees than yahoo, also because it creates a bad precedent, where current employees who might be more talented but getting 1/5th of the pay. It also artificially increases values of developers IMO. - Getting acqui-hired employees from small companies/start-ups means hiring people who used to working under pressure and delivering/shipping. This might not always be the case for Yahoo current group of people. People from outside the eco-chamber might help them change the working culture. - They had to pay that amount, doesn't mean thats how much they value they employees, it also means thats how much they had to pay the investors in order to get employees to work for them.
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netrus 13y ago
Mayer realized that Yahoo's position is that of a big old corporation: High assets, weak on true innovation. Using the assets to absorb external innovative power is the logical consequence. As time is running out, they have to go for 10M+ opportunities, instead of trying too many too small projects.
sheri 13y ago
Does acquiring companies for injecting 'young blood' actually work? I feel an acquisition means the founders and early employees would want to kick back and relax in the comfort of a big company job for a while. The examples I've seen are where they wait out their vesting period, and then quit and start their own company.
PhilipA 13y ago
As one who hasn't followed Yahoo for a long long time, how does Yahoo actually make money? Is it purely from advertisement?
- billybob255 13y ago
  I've seen estimates of ~90% of their revenue coming from advertising.
sabat 13y ago
She is not a manager. She was unsuccessful in management at Google, and if she succeeds at all at Yahoo, it will by pure luck. Her only strategy seems to be: imitate Google, and go mobile. The only way Yahoo can survive as anything beyond a minor brand owned by Microsoft is to recruit someone with a Steve Jobs level of vision and execution. That's unlikely to happen.

36 points by alexlitov 13y ago

tater 13y ago

The strategy is to appease wall street and shareholders. Doesn't matter what their plan is or what they do, as long as they have a plan and do something. While somewhat rare for publicly traded companies, Amazon has shown that companies can float while prioritizing long term strategies above everything else.

hzay 13y ago

Somehow I find it hard to believe that if it had been Zuckerberg or Larry Page or any other guy, this title would have been chosen.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
dangrossman 13y ago
Two minutes of Googling will find you plenty of writeups of companies with male CEOs on "shopping sprees". Have fun with the "intitle" operator, it's used there too.
tzs 13y ago
Steve Jobs: http://www.fastcompany.com/1563818/feisty-steve-jobs-ponders-40b-shopping-spree-apple-shareholder-meeting http://www.fastcompany.com/1563818/feisty-steve-jobs-ponders... http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/978263-tribbda/197291-the-steve-jobs-shopping-spree-that-isn-t http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/978263-tribbda/197291-the-... Bill Gates: http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1997-01-12/bill-gatess-quiet-shopping-spree http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1997-01-12/bill-gatess-q... Jeff Bezos: http://gawker.com/287019/jeff-bezos-restarts-amazons-shopping-spree http://gawker.com/287019/jeff-bezos-restarts-amazons-shoppin... Larry Page: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-google-investor-apr-12-2011-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-google-investor-apr-12-20... There are also plenty where a company is named rather than the CEO, but the CEO at the time is male. For example, HP: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/h-p-s-pricey-shopping-spree/ http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/h-p-s-pricey-shopping... http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/13/hp-continues-shopping-spree-buys-security-software-company-arcsight-for-1-5-billion-in-cash/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/13/hp-continues-shopping-spree... http://markets.cbsnews.com/cbsnews/news/read/14673193/hp_continues_shopping_spree http://markets.cbsnews.com/cbsnews/news/read/14673193/hp_con... http://qz.com/29535/autonomy-is-just-the-latest-bad-egg-in-a-misguided-hp-shopping-spree/ http://qz.com/29535/autonomy-is-just-the-latest-bad-egg-in-a... http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/09/13/hp-acquiring-arcsight-in-ongoing-security-shopping-spree/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/09/13/hp-acqu... There are many more, for many companies.
dkrich 13y ago
People who write these types of comments do more to set back gender equality than anything written about the subjects themselves. If the subject of the story were a guy would the thought of sexism even cross your mind or would you just, ya know, evaluate the story on its merits?
- LaGrange 13y ago
  If the subject of the story were a guy would the thought of sexism even cross your mind No, because it wouldn't make any sense. Now, in this specific case the criticism turns out to be unfounded, but being suspicious of word choice is perfectly reasonable, especially considered that Mayer did face a lot of unfounded criticism that was clearly gender based. Even more so when the "lack of strategy" here smells like a ton of FUD. Lots of startups getting acqui-hired, for a company that wants to take a risk and seek a fundamental change. Even hiring Mayer herself seems like a part of that strategy.
- hzay 13y ago
  I was mistaken and there's no way to indicate that in the comment now, but your reply is way out of line and ironically a good example of harmful stereotyping ("people who write these type of comments"). Also, my comment had nothing to do with the story and everything to do with the title.
  - dkrich 13y ago
    Sorry that you feel that way, but since you made a comment which called into question the validity of the article and the character of the author without any evidence or apparent research to prove its validity, I think calling into question your assumptions and the potential harm they cause to be perfectly fair. It's not right for me to generalize, so I should have said "These types of comments..." but my point still stands.

thorum 13y ago

If this were any male CEO doing all these acquisitions, would the author of this article have written about him going on a "shopping spree"? I kind of doubt it. Edit: Criticism retracted - searching around in Google, it looks like this is a common phrase when referring to companies that make a lot of purchases in a short period. Apologies to the author for implying something negative.

nonsexism 13y ago
Pretty sure the answer is YES. I do wish people here especially would stop looking for sexism where there is none. It just shows how sexist YOU are. It's like people who call a brochure racist if it doesn't have every single possible race on the front cover.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - nonsexism 13y ago
    No. It should be utterly clear to anyone with half a brain (And without sexism hangups) that "Shopping spree" is used all the time in the media, for either sex, to describe...... guess what?!!!..... a shopping spree!
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
guttermaw 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

pavs 13y ago

I think the strategy is to get as many new decent developers outside the yahoo echo chambers, in an effort to change the working culture inside the company. For many years Yahoo suffered from mismanagement of CEO with short term goal to appease shareholders as opposed to building a company based on strong workforce and values. Despite all the PR speech by the previous CEO, I never felt that the previous leadership really knew what the hell they were doing. One of the first thing Mayer had to do was stop the culture rot within the company, and you will see that a lot of her decisions, whether its buying up other companies and making new rules around favorable working conditions, is targeted on building a strong group of core developers. This obviously takes a lot of time, there is no magic bullet to fix culture rot. Mayer is from Google school of thought, so she knows a thing or two on how good working environment works. You will see that while Google has a strong leadership to guide the company, a lot of its products and services started from and driven by not the leadership, but their developers on their 20% project. So to put it in short, Yahoo is not in a position like Google where they can dictate long term strategy without getting its bases in order and fix decades of rotting. I think in the next 12 months or so will be interesting time to see what comes out of Yahoo.

badclient 13y ago
I think the strategy is to get as many new decent developers outside the yahoo echo chambers, in an effort to change the working culture inside the company. Unless I'm wrong, qwiki had 9 employees. To pay ~$5M/developer seems incredibly expensive. Yahoo could simply offer $500,000/yr and I'd reckon they'd attract talent at same caliber or better than qwiki. In that sense, this seems like a disastrous acquisition if purely for talent.
- pavs 13y ago
  I am not going to pretent to know how hiring process on big companies like yahoo/google works but here are some of the reasons I think for a company in Yahoo's position acqui-hire is the best way to go: - In general, top developer are more likely to work for more interesting companies with interesting problems to solve with good pay to boot. I think most good developer would rather work for Google or their own company than work for Yahoo. Since mooching top developers from Google is out of the question, acqui-hiring seems to be the next best option. - You can't play with 500k/yr strategy because they are other top companies with deeper pocket and can throw more money at employees than yahoo, also because it creates a bad precedent, where current employees who might be more talented but getting 1/5th of the pay. It also artificially increases values of developers IMO. - Getting acqui-hired employees from small companies/start-ups means hiring people who used to working under pressure and delivering/shipping. This might not always be the case for Yahoo current group of people. People from outside the eco-chamber might help them change the working culture. - They had to pay that amount, doesn't mean thats how much they value they employees, it also means thats how much they had to pay the investors in order to get employees to work for them.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

netrus 13y ago

Mayer realized that Yahoo's position is that of a big old corporation: High assets, weak on true innovation. Using the assets to absorb external innovative power is the logical consequence. As time is running out, they have to go for 10M+ opportunities, instead of trying too many too small projects.

sheri 13y ago

Does acquiring companies for injecting 'young blood' actually work? I feel an acquisition means the founders and early employees would want to kick back and relax in the comfort of a big company job for a while. The examples I've seen are where they wait out their vesting period, and then quit and start their own company.

PhilipA 13y ago

As one who hasn't followed Yahoo for a long long time, how does Yahoo actually make money? Is it purely from advertisement?

billybob255 13y ago
I've seen estimates of ~90% of their revenue coming from advertising.

sabat 13y ago

She is not a manager. She was unsuccessful in management at Google, and if she succeeds at all at Yahoo, it will by pure luck. Her only strategy seems to be: imitate Google, and go mobile. The only way Yahoo can survive as anything beyond a minor brand owned by Microsoft is to recruit someone with a Steve Jobs level of vision and execution. That's unlikely to happen.