I agree with your thinking here but I don't think Marrissa had a choice either. Long term thinking if Yahoo wants to stick it out as an independently operating

I agree with your thinking here but I don't think Marrissa had a choice either. Long term thinking if Yahoo wants to stick it out as an independently operating company this move is most likely short sighted, but at this point none of the investors want that. It's pretty clear that a large part of the board no longer believes in Yahoo's potential for success. They just want the money that is tied up in the Alibaba stock so they can move on with other ventures. Marissa's choices were either find a way to put a big chunk of cash in shareholder pockets ASAP or face a hostile board that was going to do it's best to take control of the company and divest the Alibaba stock anyway (you can see that certain characters on the board have been angling for this for a while now). Either way Yahoo probably loses but at least this way she has bought the company time to try and turn the corner and see if her vision can work.