Yahoo new CEO: Marissa Mayer

I don’t get it.

DISCLAIMER:  I never met Marissa and only saw some of her point of view at a conference and on television.  I have never worked with her and have no experience with her leadership skills/style.

Ok, back to the show:  I don’t get it.

Yahoo is in a pretty bad place.  They have no brand; no go-to product that everyone knows.  They have no center.  They are a loose confederation of random crap.

Look at the Yahoo website.  What is this site?  It has a left nav from hell.  What are all those things.  Is this a news site?  An advertising site?  Is it a search engine?  It used to be a search engine.  Now the search engine is powered by Bing.  There is no equivalent to Google Adwords that matters.

The website is just a collection of old junk that got accumulated by a leadership team that had no point of view.  They had no center that said, “This is who we are!”

And now Marissa is going to be the CEO.  How will she bring Yahoo back to relevance?  How will she make it matter again?  it seems like an impossible task.  There is nothing in my mind that says “Oh, she has vision!”  Maybe she does and I haven’t seen it.

Yahoo is in such a mess, I feel like it doesn’t matter.  I would be shocked if Marissa turns around that company and makes it matter again.  I would be shocked if the homepage looks different in 6 months.

I pray to all of the internet gods.  Please shock me about Yahoo.  Show me how they can turn it around.  Show me how Marissa is going to kick all kinds of ass.  Inspire me.

Best of luck to Marissa.  You signed up for Captain of the Titanic.  I hope you make it something special.


Comments

3 responses to “Yahoo new CEO: Marissa Mayer”

  1. Leonardo Herrera Avatar
    Leonardo Herrera

    Well, Flickr still matters…

  2. Jason G Avatar

    I did know Marissa Myer either, but this article gives a good indication of her imprint on Google. http://www.wired.com/business/2012/07/marissas-secret-weapon-for-recruiting-new-yahoo-talent/

    Sounds really interesting . . .

    CEO though? Hmmmmm

  3. Check out these charts
    http://ycharts.com/companies/YHOO/price#series=type:company,id:YHOO,calc:price,,id:YHOO,type:company,calc:net_income,,id:YHOO,type:company,calc:revenues&zoom=&startDate=7/26/2001&endDate=7/26/2012&format=real&recessions=false

    How odd. 1.2 billion in revenue. At their peak, revenue was going up, but net income has remained relatively steady for 10 years.

Whatya think?