Marissa Mayer Saving Yahoo! (YHOO)? Not Likely...
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Okay, we'll be the first to say it: Marissa Mayer isn't going to save Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO). Not anytime soon, anyway.
Not that she isn't capable. According to her brief bio, Mayer was the 20th employee at Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), helped innovate Google Maps, Location Services, among other features. Led the integration of Zagat, Street View, and so on.
Yahoo! is just too broken. Even usage of Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Bing search engine isn't really helping the company out. If you go to Yahoo!'s homepage, you'll ask yourself "where am I? Why is there so much American Idol?"
But, others were capable, too. Just ousted chief Scott Thompson led a successful campaign in building eBay's (Nasdaq: EBAY) PayPal unit, helping to off lagging Marketplace sales following the financial fallout of 2008 and uprising of e-Commerce giant Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN).
Before that, there was hard-charging, outspoken Carol Bartz. She built up Autodesk (Nasdaq: ADSK), arguably one of the leaders in the Enterprise Software segment. She served on multiple boards, including Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), and others.
Jerry Yang co-founded Yahoo!, but couldn't lead the once-prominent search giant past the "Google Plateau."
You have two interim CEOs in Ross Levinsohn and Tom Morse. Levinsohn was big at News Corp. (Nasdaq: NWSA), having run Fox Interactive and aiding in the acquisition of several domains like MySpace and IGN. Morse has simply done a great job as CFO at Yahoo!
Mayer will be Yahoo!'s fourth CEO in five years and sixth if you count interim holders.
Critics will say that Mayer has no CEO experience, but that might serve her well. Thinking outside that box is what made her successful at Google, so why should it stop there.
Changes can't come quick enough, either. Last week, comScore (Nasdaq: SCOR) revealed that Yahoo! lost 0.4 points in U.S. search for the three months ended in June. Total market share is at 13.0 percent, now well behind the 15.6 percent that Microsoft commands and from 66.8 percent that Google claims.
If Mayer can make Yahoo! cleaner, more integrated, and less exclamation point-y, there might be a chance. It just won't happen overnight.
Yahoo! is up just 2 percent late Monday, as investors still evaluate what is currently happen with their investment.
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Not that she isn't capable. According to her brief bio, Mayer was the 20th employee at Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), helped innovate Google Maps, Location Services, among other features. Led the integration of Zagat, Street View, and so on.
Yahoo! is just too broken. Even usage of Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Bing search engine isn't really helping the company out. If you go to Yahoo!'s homepage, you'll ask yourself "where am I? Why is there so much American Idol?"
But, others were capable, too. Just ousted chief Scott Thompson led a successful campaign in building eBay's (Nasdaq: EBAY) PayPal unit, helping to off lagging Marketplace sales following the financial fallout of 2008 and uprising of e-Commerce giant Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN).
Before that, there was hard-charging, outspoken Carol Bartz. She built up Autodesk (Nasdaq: ADSK), arguably one of the leaders in the Enterprise Software segment. She served on multiple boards, including Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), and others.
Jerry Yang co-founded Yahoo!, but couldn't lead the once-prominent search giant past the "Google Plateau."
You have two interim CEOs in Ross Levinsohn and Tom Morse. Levinsohn was big at News Corp. (Nasdaq: NWSA), having run Fox Interactive and aiding in the acquisition of several domains like MySpace and IGN. Morse has simply done a great job as CFO at Yahoo!
Mayer will be Yahoo!'s fourth CEO in five years and sixth if you count interim holders.
Critics will say that Mayer has no CEO experience, but that might serve her well. Thinking outside that box is what made her successful at Google, so why should it stop there.
Changes can't come quick enough, either. Last week, comScore (Nasdaq: SCOR) revealed that Yahoo! lost 0.4 points in U.S. search for the three months ended in June. Total market share is at 13.0 percent, now well behind the 15.6 percent that Microsoft commands and from 66.8 percent that Google claims.
If Mayer can make Yahoo! cleaner, more integrated, and less exclamation point-y, there might be a chance. It just won't happen overnight.
Yahoo! is up just 2 percent late Monday, as investors still evaluate what is currently happen with their investment.
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*NEW - Download StreetInsider's FREE iPhone and iPad App - Click Here
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