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VikingCoder

Marissa Mayer (2012-Present)

Ross Levinsohn (Interim) (2012)

Scott Thompson (2012)

Tim Morse (Interim) (2011-2012)

Carol Bartz (2009-2011)

Jerry Yang (2007-2009)

Terry Semel (2001-2007)

Timothy Koogle (1995-2001)

I seriously hope that the Board of Directors has some idea of what they're doing, because their track record certainly doesn't look like it.

EDIT: To be clear, this wasn't meant as a slam on Marissa. What I meant was "It looks like the Board has created a toxic environment that no one could survive."

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From http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/directors.cfm. Looks like they don't have many slouches. Heavy on financial services and broadcast. Perhaps light on internet entrepreneurs. Largely independent. A couple big shareholders.

Alfred Amoroso - Chairman, Yahoo! Inc.

John Hayes - Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, American Express Company

Sue James - Retired Partner, Ernst & Young LLP

David Kenny - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Weather Channel Companies

Peter Liguori - Former Chief Operating Officer, Discovery Communications, Inc. Former Chairman and President of Entertainment, Fox Broadcasting Company

Daniel Loeb - Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Third Point LLC

Thomas McInerney - Former Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, IAC/InterActiveCorp

Brad Smith - President and Chief Executive Officer, Intuit Inc.

Maynard Webb - Founder, Webb Investment Network, Chairman of the Board, LiveOps, Inc.

Harry Wilson - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, MAEVA Group, LLC

Michael Wolf - Chief Executive Officer and President, Activate Strategy, Inc.

Philip Monego spent six months there before Koogle.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/philip-monego-sr/0/11b/967?_mSpl...

I am very curious what goes in those Board of Directors meetings.

Does everyone just sit around asking eachother "What the fuck does this company do, and how are we still in business?"

Seriously, what does Yahoo do? I don't know, because I haven't been their website since the 1990's. They obviously don't make software or hardware products, because I don't own any and have never paid for any of their products. I have no use for whatever services they might offer because I've never heard of anyone praising or recommending their services. I honestly would like to know how Yahoo still exists.

I think Marissa Mayer has a much harder task in front of her than she might think. Yahoo really doesn't do anything, or have products. How is she going to improve that which does not exist?

Yahoo has some good niche products that are doing relatively well compared to the rest of the company (fantasy sports is one, Flickr is another). To survive they probably need to do more of those and figure out how to specialize and monetize the products that aren't stagnating.

Yep. I only go there for Flickr and March Madness. Flickr could use some innovation, but it does its core mission well enough. March Madness is a simple task done well.

Used to be on a couple of private mailing lists through their groups, but those have both moved to private google groups over the years.

You know what I'd honestly like to see them do? Compete with Google, head on. I think search and ads are both stagnant markets compared to what they should be. I would absolutely love to see her knock Google out of its complacency and get those worlds moving forward again.

She could pull the talent together to do it, I think, if she was bold enough.

The problem is I'm not sure she's bold enough. But Yahoo absolutely requires gigantic boldness. It's the main quality they need at the top, honestly.

I can't stand Flickr, the moment I see the two loading animation of a Flickr page I reach for the back button.

I hear people say good things about Hadoop... though the stigma of it's development at Yahoo has always kept me from investing the time to learn more.

When Thompson got pushed out new people took control of the Board, including the hedge fund that outed him for lying about his CS degree.

In the same way you can't attribute past failures to Mayer, you can't attribute them to the current Board either.

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