I really like Mayer, but I’m not sure she can turn things around quickly enough for the critics.
Pressure mounts on Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer
I really like Mayer, but I’m not sure she can turn things around quickly enough for the critics.
Jim, YHOO stack has doubled in the last 2 years. Folks are NUTS if they think the board will want her to do anything but stay for as long as she wants.
Critics are so cute when they get impatient. Especially those gosh-darned hedge fund managers.
The crowd were saying something like it about TC 18 months ago weren’t they?
I’m not so sure about that. Look at the book value of Yahoo minus Ali Baba and Yahoo Japan. Plus, Yahoo sold a bunch of Ali Baba stock pre-IPO at $68 as opposed to opening day $93. That’s a lot of money left on the table (even accounting for technical market reasons that might mean they wouldn’t have received $90+ prices). The Board may not be ready to boot Marissa, but I doubt they love her. In her defense, no one sane thought this was anything other than a Starter CEO job for her.
For many years I had yahoo as my home page and used their mail service exclusively.
Over the years however their home page has become dominated by whole page pop-up ads. Throw in less and less news items and more and more dumb celebrity stories, plus astonishingly high number of sexist articles eg “Best bums in Hollywood” style stories were becoming increasingly common, finally turned me away from having Yahoo as my home page.
And then there was the redesign of their mail service. Illogically placed buttons, useful features disappeared, read emails would continue to be shown as unread, and an ad occupying the first line of my emails, has led me to ditch accessing my mail through Yahoo. I know operate via Thunderbird and life is much easier.
These are my reasons for leaving Yahoo. Until they improve their content, simplify their mail and stop advertising dominating their product I shall not return.
It seems her critics thank that Yahoo is still a search engine.
I’ve pretty much hated her ever since reading a profile of her where, when reviewing entry-level candidates for a design job, she dismissed one because they had less than straight A’s, saying “Good students are good at all things.”
My reaction then, as now, is that if you are getting straight A’s you aren’t pushing yourself hard enough. Certainly there is a place for people who consistently meet expectations, but there is also a place for people who take risks.
Perhaps I’m not being fair, but then, nor was she, and she has quite a bit more power than I do.
Oh yeah, and then don’t forget the story of the new Yahoo logo…
If you’re not getting straight As, perhaps you’ve actually found a subject you prefer over the others.
Good thing Einstein wasn’t born in 1990. Sounds like she’s doing what Google does; creating a monoculture. Yawn.