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Is "buy lots of big properties so you can advertise across all of them" really CEO genius? It's something that Yahoo was doing for years before Meyer even came on board- they bought Flickr and Delicious, and tried to buy Facebook. Granted, none of those were hugely successful, but we're still yet to see whether Tumblr and (maybe) Hulu will be.

I'm not sure that buying Hulu is such a slam-dunk, anyway. They are entirely at the mercy of the TV networks- if they pull content, Hulu is worth very, very little. People use Hulu largely because they have to.

Not a ceo, but buying hulu looks like a good idea if they have the cash. Better than rolling out a new one from scratch. I would say simple business decisions may make a good businessperson.

You cant roll out a Hulu from scratch. It is basically a venture between content providers. How much TV content does Yahoo produce ? none. It is a huge mistake to buy Hulu. I dont know how much they'll be paying for this but it is worth 0 money, just like Tumblr.

This may very well be true. But you shouldn't discount some points.

1. Yahoo will negotiate some kind of licensing agreement.

2. Yahoo will benefit from a known name and existing users.

It's not like the content providers are going to abandon a rather large channel with a lot of momentum.

I don't understand why this criticism keeps coming up.

Isn't it safe to assume that anyone that is buying Hulu would know that the content is what is most important?

I assume that to be the case for Mayer, so I assume she wouldn't buy Hulu without the content. That doesn't make sense. Unless....she knows something that we don't know...like Yahoo is going into the original content creation business like Netflix - but even then, we would still be years away from Hulu recovering from the networks pulling their stuff.

Give them a little credit please.

Fully agree. Buying properties is certainly not innovative, or genius for that matter. Oracle was on a shopping spree two years ago and there was nothing genius or innovative about that move.

Marissa's CEO tenure is to be determined as are all these deals that she's making.

I think Hulu is a decent move for Yahoo, but the proof is in the pudding and it's all just media hype at the moment. Additionally, like you said, Hulu is run by the content companies - if they pull their content, it's worth zero. Content deals are very difficult and tricky to achieve, especially for Yahoo being non-factor in the content game (vs. companies like Apple and Amazon that have deep content deal making skills).

This could be a potentially idiotic move.

So there are 2 ways to look at your feedback. You either just saw what you wanted to see in my comment, and responded to that - or you take for granted what she is doing.

I never said that "buying lots of big properties so you can advertise across all of them" is CEO genius. I said...that Mayer is increasingly showing her genius.

It's not about acquiring internet properties...it is the properties that she is choosing to acquire. It's also the fact that those properties are even agreeing to be acquired by her - that is making her feat even more impressive.

Nothing is guaranteed to be a slam-dunk. Many of these acquisitions may turn out to be duds or not as good as we (who want to see Mayer succeed) hope.

>* It's something that Yahoo was doing for years before Meyer even came on board- they bought Flickr and Delicious, and tried to buy Facebook.*

I think that statement alone is an indication to the genius that is Mayer. Yahoo tried to buy Facebook for a similar $1B back in the day, and was rebuffed. Fast forward a few years, and under different leadership a similar deal can be made with a similarly "hot startup" and the deal is accepted. Sure, I know there are many factors at play, but the fact of the matter is just a few years ago - Yahoo couldn't make these types of deals. It must be that I am not the only one that thinks she is doing a good job.

Also, if what she is doing is not genius, then why did no one else do it like her before? The genius in this situation is not going on a shopping spree willy nilly. She came in, and has clearly looked at Yahoo for what it is. She doesn't seem to be trying to be like Google - although some of the commenters here dispute that. She is steadily, and systematically improving the best of Yahoo and killing the worst. She is also adding properties that will play to Yahoo's strengths.

The mere fact that they unveiled a re-design of Flickr that puts pictures front-and-center, while acquiring Tumblr. I think people misunderstand what a brilliant move that is.

She refreshed a property that is inherently friendly to "display media" (i.e. not link/text based media) - while buying another hot property that is inherently friendly to "display media". Once they crack the code, that allows them to add adverts to the content on their network, without sacrificing the quality of the experience too much (i.e. doing to display media what Google did to SERP results).....that could be even more powerful than what Google did - because most brands and agencies prefer display media, because it connects with the audience more.

If they spam all their properties with annoying Flash ads then that is an easy way to squander it - but if they figure out a novel/innovative way to monetize this inventory....and she continues to acquire hot properties at the current rate....we could be looking at the most valuable tech company in the next decade. If not most valuable, if you assume that Google doesn't find another major stream of revenue, Yahoo could be worth more than Google at least.

You heard it here first ;)

Edit: Oh...and also....no serious buyer would pay any amount of series cash for Hulu without reasonable contracts for the content that makes it so appealing. If Mayer does that, that would be a dumb move - unless she knows something we don't....which I don't think that's the case. Given her short track record, I would be surprised (and disappointed) if she did that.

I think the genius will instead lie in her plan for internal consolidation for the two platforms to converge in harmony as complementary.

Taken together the two most recent poaches (i.q. provided Hulu) have much crossover especially while accounting for further past acquisitions. Amalgamating successfully will position them as key content provider in the market.

That last sentence was so full of businessy-speak....I have no idea what you meant to say....and I am an MBA!

I worked at Yahoo 2003-2005, and already then the split between the "Yahoo is a technology company" crowd - exemplified by those who still wanted Yahoo to try to compete on search technology - and the "Yahoo is a media company" crowd was rapidly being won by the media company crowd.

I was in London, and I don't know much about how this played out in Sunnyvale, but apart from some occasional attempts at convincing people otherwise (like the acquisition of WhereOnEarth that was widely "advertised" across the company) on our end at least "everyone" apart from some pockets of engineering appeared to understand very clearly that Yahoo was a media company where growing pageviews to monetize them with ads was the core of the company.

It sounds to me like she's trying to build another Google. It's really (almost impossibly) hard to dethrone innovators without actually doing any innovation. It's equally difficult keeping talent when the corporate culture isn't hacker-centric.

While buying your way into the party is a nice first step, what do you do when you don't have the talent pool to continue to innovate and can't even grow it? Especially when you don't allow remote work, and this industry is increasingly going remote (even if only part-time)?

I'm seeing a lot of big talk (primarily via money) from Yahoo, but I don't feel convinced that this is going anywhere. Without a focus on the people and innovation, what do you do after you buy a bunch of startups? So far Yahoo's response has been "buy them and let them operate independently." People go to work at Google to work at Google, not to work at a subsidiary of Google. So if I wanted to go work for Hulu, I'd want to work for Hulu, not Yahoo. Yahoo hasn't been an engineer's company for a very, very long time, and I don't see them taking strides to fix that, so it's hard to say what's going to happen.

In order to change the company's product trajectory, culture, and perception there are many stages that they must go through to get to the ultimate goal. At this point in time, Yahoo does not have the public perception that they are a cool company to work for, especially for engineers. This makes it a near impossible task to attract the talent necessary for internal innovation. However, if they buy cool companies, show that they are working on things internally (Flickr redesign), and prove that management is competent, they will be able to transition to internal innovation.

Of course, it is a big jump to go from buying companies to transforming their culture to match the perception that they are attempting to create. Perhaps removing the ability to work remotely was a bad first step, perhaps not. I imagine that Mayer knew what she was doing here and it will likely turn out to be a positive move. The big question is what other steps they take internally to truly change the culture. It could be a big flop, but if anybody knows a little something about company culture it would be Mayer.

> At this point in time, Yahoo does not have the public perception that they are a cool company to work for, especially for engineers.

That's the thing, it's all public perception and not based in reality. I've worked at Y! for ~4 years (software engineer) and love it. As Marissa has publicly stated, Y! is the world's largest startup, so there's a ridiculous amount of opportunity to work on fun and challenging problems.

> As Marissa has publicly stated, Y! is the world's largest startup

All CEOs state that because its the hot, sexy thing. Especially for the new, younger employee generation.

The problem is you don't want a culture with the public perception, at least for engineering, you're looking for the the same culture that are leaving the company now. So many awesome things came out of Y! but I feel much like they are going the ways of Sun.

> what do you do when you don't have the talent pool to continue to innovate and can't even grow it?

I'm sure Yahoo still has a big talent pool. Don't really know how they managed to do it as it doesn't really make sense, however if you want some proof of that, take a look at: http://developer.yahoo.com/everything.html (speaking of which, did you know that Apache Hadoop was initiated and is still led by Yahoo?)

> So far Yahoo's response has been "buy them and let them operate independently."

Actually that wasn't Yahoo's behaviour in the past. Delicious for example stagnated after they began rewriting/redesigning it, as they wanted Delicious to be "integrated" with Yahoo's network. Development eventually grinned to a halt. If Yahoo would have kept Flickr or Delicious operating independently, then both would be a lot bigger than they are today.

Yahoo also did a stupid move when they sold Delicious. But at the very least they sold it, instead of shutting it down, like Google did with Reader.

> People go to work at Google to work at Google, not to work at a subsidiary of Google.

Well, no, you're talking about the poor fools that go through that awful interview process without caring about what they'll end-up working on, being assigned on Calendar, or on fixing bugs of internal tools, or on some project destined for some African country that nobody will ever hear about, or on some other soul-sucking activity with the only thing to show for being a Google T-shirt.

Google is still a good brand among employers and it's still something to be able to say that you're working at Google, however, like all other big software companies, Google got too big and those with a minimal internal knowledge of how things work there know for a fact that it really isn't the glamorous place to work at, unless you're lucky.

> Yahoo hasn't been an engineer's company for a very, very long time, and I don't see them taking strides to fix that

I can't possibly imagine how in the world would you know that, unless you worked for them. Well did you?

The Hadoop team quit Yahoo to start HortonWorks last year.

> on some project destined for some African country that nobody will ever hear about,

Uh, bringing a billion people onto the Internet for the first time, and turning the 3rd world into the 1st world, isn't most people's definition of soul-sucking.

It is clear that she understands that Yahoo is a New Media company. They serve assets to many eyeballs and monetize those assets.

That is pretty much the exact same thing as Terry Semel's vision for Yahoo was.

Remember him?

Wonder what Jerry Yang has to say about all of this

Yes...but for whatever reason, he couldn't execute.

Perhaps he didn't have the geek cred that Mayer has - so no one would make the deals with him.

Tumblr is a major coup for her, and if she pulls of Hulu...that would be crazy too.

I agree. The other contributing factor here: Yahoo's in a position to bet the farm. They're not growing, and haven't been for years.

(Look at their financials: http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/yhoo/financials)

Analysts only expect sales to increase 1-3% over the next few years: http://www.thestreet.com/story/11933654/3/4-big-stocks-ripe-...

She was pulled in to make big moves.... and is making them!

Except Hulu doesn't have much inventory, at least on an exclusive basis. It has eyeballs and distribution. The assets belong to the studios and networks.

A roll-up is not exactly a new strategy, especially in media. You attempt to build economies of scale by amassing audience and distribution. Historically, however, the prices you pay (especially once folks figure out what you're doing) often prove to be inflated later on.

As an acquisition, Hulu is essentially a bag of content contracts with expiration dates. The infrastructure has value, but it's probably incidental to an acquirer like Yahoo. The challenge is to turn that bag into a property with lasting value; Yahoo is in a much better position to multiply that value than the group of current owners whose half-hearted "coopetition" has resulted in the fickle and watered-down service we currently enjoy.

Thank you!

News Corp, Comcast, etc. They don't have the experience selling online display media like Yahoo!

Guess who else does? No one!!!!

So they have an incentive to cooperate.

As I said earlier, if Mayer makes a deal without locking up long-term contracts, then on the surface that seems like a dumb deal.

Given what I have seen of her so far, I would be surprised if she did that. She is doing good so far.

Making acquisitions like this isn't CEO genius. Far from it. Yahoo was making acquisitions before Mayer.

It's what happens after the acquisitions are made that will determine whether Yahoo just blew billions of dollars or actually pushed their company forward into the next generation.

sigh

It's not about the fact that she is making acquisitions. It is a well known fact that CEOs like to be self-aggrandizing by doing big deals.

The difference is the TYPE of deals she is doing.

All of her deals, so far, fit into Yahoo's strengths.

Also...the fact that she is able to do these deals at all, is testament to her genius. Many others before her tried, but couldn't do these deals.

So there must be something different about her than everybody else that tried.

Edit: And yes, the story is yet to be told about how these acquisitions turn out. But with the refocus on product, recent redesign and refactor of Flickr and the way she is consolidating Yahoo's focus around products that give quality display media inventory. That is the genius. It is easy to dismiss it, but if it were so easy, why did no one else do it - including 2 of the founders!

Hahaha hold your horses dude. What is so genius about buying a bunch of gigantic companies ?

Genius? Tumblr is not worth what they paid for and it sounds like the next myspace deal. Hulu makes 0 profit.

There is no genius in just buying random stuffs.

It is so short sided ( stock pumping ) it can only lead to a crash .

There is 0 strategy just a big bubble.