Marissa Mayer Shuffles Yahoo Leadership Team | Hacker News Reader

Marissa Mayer Shuffles Yahoo Leadership Team

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

68 pointslando231982 comments

No mention of search at all. A year ago, Mayer was going to put Yahoo back in the search business.[1] Yahoo resells Bing search, for which Bing pays Yahoo. Yahoo's own search engine was discontinued in 2010. The deal with Microsoft/Bing is up for review, and Yahoo has the opportunity to exit. Yahoo hired a new head of search last year, but his area of expertise was negotiating with Microsoft. The Yahoo search announcement seems to have been a bluff to get a better deal from Microsoft/Bing.

This year, search doesn't even get a mention.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/11/technology/yahoo-mayer/

Honestly, search is not a market I'd ever want to get in. Even if you build a strong ad network for it, ads are paying less and less and unless you have a new approach that give results that are a quantum leap better than google, you're going to fight a losing battle.

I mean, after Google, Baidu has ~11% of the market (and actually gives passable results for English), Bing has ~10% (after spending billions), Yahoo has about 9%, but is basically just Bing (so maybe Bing has 19%?) and after that there's AOL, Ask, Lycos, Excite there's also Yandex, Naver, Exalead, Gigablast, Munax, Qwant, Sogou, Soso, Youdao.

There's also Metasearch engines: Blingo, Yippy, DeeperWeb, Dogpile, HotBot, and a dozen more.

There's tons of language or geographic specific specific ones: Biglobe, Accoona, Goo, Miner.hu, Walla!, etc.

And then there's all the specific engines like Yelp, CareerBuilder, Glassdoor, and hell, Reddit's search even counts given how much content is on Reddit these days.

This is not a space I'd want to fight in, search is fracturing, the monetization story doesn't look good long-term, and nobody seems to have figured out a way to search that's fantastically better than keyword + some graph weight + heuristics

If I were Mayer, I'd be looking for a way out of search as fast as possible.

> ads are paying less and less

Do you have proof of this on a search level? On a display level, I'd agree with you, but anecdotal, things seems as competitive as ever in search.

It's been generally well understood in the market that CTR has been crashing the last couple years, even while impressions have been up.

again, search & display need to be separated out.

If you don't have proof - you can just make assertions that something is "so" and let it be.

Are you sure you're not confusing CTR & CPC?

No, my understanding is that both are way down. Fewer people click ads and the ads that are clicked pay less.

I'm happy to be shown that I'm wrong though.

It's very likely that Google's search CPC rates have been falling or stagnant for years. Given the size of search in the makeup of their ad revenue, you can hardly have falling CPC rates for 3.x years without search being partially responsible (at the absolute minimum, rates are stagnant in search).

http://searchengineland.com/google-cpc-declines-dont-mobile-...

Thanks for the article.

People are overreacting to this. The drop in CPC is coming from getting MORE business in developing regions (which means lower cpcs & lower avg across the board). Certainly doesn't mean Google is making less money.

> We know most of Google’s growth is coming from outside North America, which means they are adding search volume but at a much cheaper auction than their established business. North America business is very strong and has seen CPC inflation for the desktop search — due to plateauing inventory and higher prices on things like PLAs.”

I had the opposite impression, from a friend who does adwords for a living and articles such as:

"AdWords Cost Per Click Rises 26% Between 2012 and 2014"

http://www.adgooroo.com/resources/blog/adwords-cost-per-clic...

Parent comment is talking about the entire ecosystem - not the specific markets.

As new markets emerge, it's less competitive (in those markets) and then prices drop (which drop the avg).

In general, CPC doesn't mean much if you talk in total aggregate (you need to look at the specific markets) and CPC still doesn't address volume (which is the other half of the equation).

I'm guessing most of the people decrying the search ads are doing so from anecdotal evidence rather than statistics.

Search with ads is a profitable business, even if you're small. All those little guys, such as Lycos, InfoSeek, and DuckDuckGo are modestly profitable. Search ads are inherently more valuable than most other ads, because they're displayed when the user is actively looking to buy something. Most other forms of advertising are annoyances.

The economics of the search industry are strange. Google pays Apple to be on the iPhone. Yahoo pays Mozilla to be on Firefox. Microsoft has their own browser, which comes with Bing as the default. Search as a service thus has negative value. Google is like the Jewelry Channel, which pays cable companies to get a channel. On the other hand, ESPN and HBO charge cable channels; the money flows the other way.

What I don't understand is that there is the impression that that Tumblr isn't doing well because it hasn't broken out of the teenage and 20's demographic. By forcing changes to try to extend to more age demographics, they risk alienating the ones they already have. They could simply just focus on the teen and 20's demographic and wait it out until they get older and are entrenched in the platform.

I agree. This is kinda how Facebook has lost the attention of an important early demographic - high schoolers. It was probably due to the fact the everyone they knew was on FB, and it wasn't the "cool" place to be anymore.

I think facebook made the choice to lose the kids and keep the middle class/middle age moms. Middle class/age moms buy stuff.

It's not totally that simple. When they acquired Tumblr, the valuation was dominated by goodwill --- 750MM of it --- which was explained in part by the value to Yahoo of exposing Tumblr's users to Yahoo's monetization systems, and of integrating Yahoo technology directly into Tumblr. If that plan goes out the window, they may need to formally account for that, which can hurt their numbers.

They will eventually need to do that like with the rest of the acquisitions.

IMO Yahoo is dinosaur that cannot see easier ways to monetize Tumblr. The site has so many potential, yet Yahoo decides to go the usual - advertising and data sales.

To be fair, Tumblr's monetization strategy was to sell to Yahoo and let them figure it out. And what are these easier ways you speak of?

I'm using Tumblr as a blogging platform mainly because the interface is a lot simpler than Wordpress, I don't think most people reading my blog (which is hardly anyone) would even know it's on Tumblr at first glance. Tumblr is also pretty easy to customize.

All being said, they could do somethings better to make writing long-form content easier (like a larger text entry area).

I'm not a tumbler user but you could simply edit your text off-line and then cut-and-paste it into the tumbler text entry area when you're done. Much easier to re-arrange text and do things like spell checking and keeping an overview as well.

Yes, this is what I do. My point being it's a fine blogging platform, but it shows just a few signs of being used for short-form content historically. They aren't far from making it generally useful, because it pretty much already is.

Also, somewhat recently, you can compose posts in Markdown, which I like.

Is there a good track record of Yahoo-sized companies that got back on top of their industry by shuffling executives around? Seems like more often than not failing companies are always characterized by lot of shuffling in an attempt to "do something" and in the end stay the same or get worse.

Something about deck chairs on the Titanic comes to mind. To be fair, there wasn't much there when she joined and I don't honestly expect anyone to make Yahoo relevant again.

I'm not sure that's the specific goal of this move. It's very doubtful any company has suddenly reversed their market position by switching two executives' positions. However, it's likely this move is more intended to send a message to the other executives that whatever their position, even the leader of Tumblr, that maintaining a narrow market for a platform is unacceptable. I doubt Marissa thinks that the switch will actually expand Tumblr's market share, but that it's a future-looking move that will encourage other execs to engage a broad audience.

I don't know how effective it will be, but I'd bet dollars to dimes that's the motivation.

Isn't it really hard for Yahoo-sized companies to get back on top of their industry in general? A list of such companies and theories as to how they managed to recover would be interesting.

Apple, IBM ... and in a few years we will see what will become of Dell. That is all I can think of ...

In fairness IBM didn't really get back on top of it's original industry, they where clever enough to get on top of a much more lucrative one, also it's much harder to clone IBM developers than IBM hardware ;).

I think the whole point is that this Khalaf gentleman is a total rock star and gets/deserves more power.

It's true. He did a great job at Yahoo's mobile developer conference this year.

Apple

The smartest thing I ever did was to sell my startup to Simon Khalaf's. Marissa's made a good move here.

I wonder if Yahoo will get back on track. Marissa is doing an extraordinary good job. I would say that if all measures Marissa is doing don`t help Yahoo, nothing can help Yahoo.

Why would you say that? Not that I disagree but I don't have any information that causes me to agree with you.

The simple fact that you're talking about this now is already a rather mighty feat.

Before Marissa took over Yahoo wasn't even worth mentioning anymore outside of sentences containing the word 'downhill' or equivalent.

It's a tech company with a market cap of $42bn and see was the fourth CEO to take the wheel in 2012. Of course, what happens at Yahoo! is news and that the conclusion that it went downhill during all the board shuffles makes sense. But I'm not sure this proves she is doing great:

Certainly seems to be in a better state than before. That can be credited to Marissa Mayer. A look at the stock price[1] seems to confirm she indeed does a good job.

However, one might argue that's just mean reversion at work: they hit a bad streak followed by a good one. The fact that this shuffle remembered me of the Henrique de Castro mess makes me conclude see is not doing an 'extraordinary good job', just good.

[1]: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=YHOO

> Marissa is doing an extraordinary good job

No she isn't. She has done anything but spend money, fire and recruit executives, but she has no plan.

Apple was saved through the creation of a series of world-changing products. Yahoo doesn't even seem to have creating breakthrough products as a goal. They have no excuse for not making something people want.

I think Yahoo is simply too quiet. To be honest the only thing that keeps popping up these couple years about Yahoo were

* email

* Fantasy Sport

* Flickr

* Yahoo Finance

* Mayer

* Tumblr

* Alibaba sale

The first four have existed for years. I bet a lot of Tumblr users don't even know Yahoo owns Tumblr now. Yahoo search is probably getting more notice given now Yahoo search is Firefox's default search engine (at least that's the case in North America).

Yahoo has some great ideas like the Digest app and doing some great mobile and streaming products, but I don't use them, and I don't always hear my coworkers and my friends talking about Yahoo (well except my friends who are working for them, but they are still pretty quiet about what they are working on).

Maybe their Yahoo Original series will catch on some fire.

I liked Yahoo pipes, but they're super limited compared to IFTTT

Pipes is a dead product, it's just waiting for someone to remember to turn off the light. Even in 2011 it was on life support.

It's a great example of how even when Yahoo hits on something interesting, they will neglect it and fail to profit from it. Instead IFTTT launches 4 years later and gets a $170mm valuation.

> Pipes is a dead product

It totally is. Is there something that can rise from the ashes or was it just a waste?

At least when I was at Yahoo (many years ago), there was zero apparent desire to even continue to operate in that type of service space. I guess Yahoo wants to be a media company and sell ads, not provide APIs to do nerd stuff for free.

I would look to Zapier or IFTTT instead. I haven't used Zapier, but the fact that they actually charge money (shocking!) gives me hope. Maybe they can actually build a business around it.

I have never used Yahoo pipes, but I found IFTTT to be quite limited when I tried it earlier this year. There are no booleans, pipeline control, arguments, scheduling, reuse, etc. I know this tool wasn't written for me, but these are things that I would derive real value from.

I want visual tools at a level just above a scripting language, hosted on a managed platform I can largely ignore. An API for webhooks and oauth, 3rd party API support, triggers that can run custom javascript or python... I'd pay all the money for that.

And Community Season 6!

This is the first Yahoo! endeavor I've engaged in since their original directory. I'm glad they picked it up, but it's not clear they have any velocity with the rest of Screen.

To confirm your point - my blog has been on Tumblr for years and I just now discovered the Yahoo connection by reading this article.

Yahoo has services not products, with invisible and constant improvements. Not comparable.

Google used to be a simple search service.

and IBM used to build computers.

Ahh but what do people want?

Give her time. She did not start with a lot in my opinion.

I agree... but it has been 3 years since she took over. At some point people are going to want to see actual results. And so far Yahoo has gone from $5b in revenue in 2012 to $4.68b (2013) to $4.62b last year. (Even by quarter: Q4-2014 is 10m in revenue less than Q4-2013... and net profit dropped by more than half)

I understand there's a lot to fix at Yahoo.. but how much more time is she really going to have without posting real results?

Edit: link: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:YHOO&fstype=ii

She should have as long as Yahoo is in the black. It's appetant stockholders greedy for short term gain that are screaming to lay-off gainfully employed people. People that are producing real and substantial profit quarter after quarter.

She should pull a Dell and drop the pack of vultures hoping for a takeover. Then she could continue to do the awesome surgery to rid Yahoo of its cancer.

Yahoo isn't even keeping up with inflation... much less kept par with average IT-industry growth.

If it were a private company, she would have "as long as Yahoo is in the black"... but Yahoo took money from other people. Those people are going to want a return at some point.

The vast majority of the current market cap is Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. Heck, all of it by some accounts. The stockholders will get their money back. The stock price reflects this.

7b* in profit is substantial and it'd be a travesty if 15k people lost their jobs for a little short term action.

*http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=yhoo%20profit

4.6b is profit is substantial

No, they had 4.6b in revenue. Their operating income was 146m for 2014... (which is a big drop from the 590m in 2013, and 565m in 2012).

Re edit: I see you edited the profit number to 7b. This number includes 10b in one-time asset sales during 2014. (EDIT: sold 10b of Alibaba stake [0]). For Yahoo's sake, I hope Marissa's plan isn't to sell off Yahoo 10b at a time to boost net profits.

it'd be a travesty if 15k people lost their jobs for a little short term action.

No where have I suggested layoffs. I said Marissa may find herself out of a job if things don't improve. I imagine she has another year or two max (unless things change). That's very different than saying 15k people should be let go.

0. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/yahoo-faces-moment-of...

I hear you, and agree regarding the 10b. My point was simply that supporting 15k jobs and still being in the black has value. I know that you know that.

Would you agree that maximizing shareholder value is not the ultimate ethic?

Also, I never said that you were calling for lay-offs

Would you agree that maximizing shareholder value is not the ultimate ethic?

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree. I simply don't think that (most) investors agree with that, and will seek a change in leadership if the income statement doesn't improve.

Agreed

I agree; and that's coming from someone that just resigned from Yahoo. Here is an excerpt from my resignation post:

The transformation that I’ve experienced over the last two years of being in Sunnyvale has been inspiring. There is a palatable sense that we are on the verge of a momentous turnabout. No internet company of that size has ever lost monthly active users in those numbers without nose-diving into oblivion. I am rooting for Yahoo; a turnaround would be glorious. In the minds of the employees that I’ve spoken to, given the time needed, it is an all but forgone conclusion that Yahoo will soar to new heights on the internet.

http://blog.shawndumas.com/post/115979867433/im-leaving-yaho...

I don't know if you remember me; We had a conversation in the bus on route 26 in mid-2013 when I had newly moved to Sunnyvale. I remember you mentioning your kid and his love for coding; best of luck to both of you!

I absolutely remember you! OpenStack, right? Thank you. My profile has an email address; use it if you think of anything that I can clear up about my resignation.

Few more decades and surely she will do something breakthrough! She is given way to much credit imo. Any male CEO by now would be cursed but most stockholders in this situation.

Me thinks the board is moving against marisa (yahoo board trying to change ceo, oh my)

the only change this time, instead of shoping around and turning the company upside down they shopped and put the CEO-to-be as SVP first.

Should have skipped tumbler, saved $1billion and spent it on people and given them some freedom to fix yahoo products.

Why do we still care?

The phrase "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" comes to mind.

I'm going to be calling useless executives working in corporate lichdoms 'deck chairs' from now on.

Superficially, any time anyone reshuffles or rearranges anything, that could come to mind. Please provide a more fleshed out post unless you're interested in quipping and moving on.

Second envelope.

She needs to shuffle her idiotic mobile team by firing all of them, at least the ones who made the mobile email app. Who the hell designs, in this day and age, an email app that does not let you log out; your only choice is to delete the app if you don't want someone who picks up your phone to look at your yahoo mail. I used to be skeptical of snapchat, but I'm coming around to new startups that understand how humans use things and don't want everything open to everyone.

Heh this is the least of the problems with the mobile app (and Y mail in general)

And parts of the mail team, too. A mail provider of their size that manages to regularly get blacklisted is in a bad position (United Internet and others right now are not taking mail from at least parts of yahoo groups, and yahoo claims all is fine and all mail delivered. Cue furious users that can't leave lists and are missing mails)

Apple...

Part of the reason I have never owned an apple phone in my 5 years of smartphone usage.

Must be some yahoo mobile email devs here...listen, sorry to threaten your livelihood with my statements...but the fact of the matter is, the product is a pos and not aligned with what it should be in terms of human needs. Nobody wants their goddamn email available at all times to anyone. That's why they've been password protected, since like, the 80s. Fix it and you might save your company/jobs. Basic logic.

Uh, Gmail on Android doesn't let you sign out without delinking the account from your device...

Uh, they should fix that. That's fucking stupid. And doesn't give yahoo an out. It's dumb to treat users like that.

it's not a bug, it's a feature!

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