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Marissa Mayer: Saving Yahoo?

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SUNNYVALE, CA - JULY 17: The Yahoo logo is di...

Is Marissa Mayer Yahoo’s savior?

Back in the day, I was a Yahoo freak. This was back when AOL was spamming our mailboxes with their crappy little disks (I must have collected about 50 of them), and there was no such think as a “homepage” if you weren’t part of AOL’s little “network”. That is, until Yahoo came along.

Yahoo sold me originally on 2 things. First, I was an early Yahoo mail user (I was actually able to grab “wday” as my profile – try to find a 4 letter profile like that nowadays). Second, Yahoo created a “portal” I could use as my homepage. It was so cool – news feeds, a link to my Yahoo mail, a search area, fun little widgets, sports scores, and other stuff I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten. And, best of all, it was free (take that you AOL weenies).

Image representing Marissa Mayer as depicted i...

Now, Yahoo is banking on an ex-Google exec (employee #20) to lead them from the wilderness and compete once again with the likes of Google and Facebook. According to the Huffington Post:

Google’s first female engineer, Mayer will now serve as Yahoo’s President and CEO and will sit on the board of directors, according to Yahoo’s official press release. She had previously been the vice president of Google’s local, maps and location services and was responsible for the look and feel of many widely used Google products, most notably the Google home page.

“I wanted to work at Google because the smartest people were there,” Mayer told The Huffington Post’s Bianca Bosker last July. “And I wanted to work at Google because I felt utterly unprepared to work at a search engine.”

So far, I like her attitude. Marissa, who has been labeled the “Googirl” in the past, displays an attitude that should make Yahoo fans feel like maybe the old days might be back. From a CNN interview:

As one of a relatively small number of women in high-ranking positions in tech — Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman are two others — Mayer often is asked about what she thinks about the role of women in her field.

“I actually think it’s the wrong question,” she told Newsweek/The Daily Beast in an interview in May. “It’s a question that hangs us up and causes the progress to be slower. The truth is we’re not producing enough computer scientists, period.”

Passion, she says, is what really matters. Not gender.

And according to “uncrunched“:

I've interviewed Mayer many times over the years at TechCrunch and Le Web events and I've been able to see the way she thinks during those interviews and in other interactions.

What happens next is she'll want to win. And generally she does win. I'd expect a bold new product strategy and an acquisition plan to help build the foundation of that strategy.

Fixing Yahoo will be difficult, particularly since the company seemed to have grown comfortable with its decline and no longer had any fight left in them.

I expect Mayer will be fixing all that sooner rather than later.

It's a good day for Yahoo.

 

Related articles
marissa mayerSo, there you have it. Against all odds, Yahoo decided to really stir the pot and selected Marissa Mayer as it’s new chief.

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User Reviews and Comments

  1. Yahoo!CEO Marissa Mayer Is On The Board Of Directors Of Walmart. Would She Make A Good President Of The USA? After seeing what’s happened to Yahoo! ever since she took over in 2012?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marissa_Mayer
    Heidegger, yes, that’s the whole point.

    That was great for Yahoo! stockholders.

    But at the expense of the rest of us…..

    With liberals, it’s always the zero sum game. For every winner, there has to be a loser.

    And they make sure of it.

    View Comment
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  2. Does Yahoo Have The Right To Terminate Other Services If A Yahoo Answer User Posts Impopular Questions? It can happen that a good Yahoo Answers user can have many unfair complaints reported against him. Yahoo doesn’t just stop his ‘Yahoo Answers’ service but also closes his/her email account. I don’t know if this scenario has ever happened but believe it is wrong if a crucial Internet service is removed after other people don’t like your ‘yahoo answers’ opinion. What do you think and how does it work legally?

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  3. How To Get Prior Version Of Yahoo Mail Back? If Marissa Mayer likes Google so much that she changed the Yahoo Mail loved by millions to resemble Google’s – why did she leave Google to come to Yahoo? If the millions of Yahoo Mail users wanted something like Google – we would have gone to Google! Ms. Mayer is aware that 57% of Yahoo Mail users dislike the new Yahoo Mail and she still refuses to bring it back – is she trying to get rid of all of us? Does she not care about our loyalty to the company she was just hired to run? Is she a Manchurian CEO? The way she’s treating us seems to show that, and perhaps Yahoo’s Board made a big mistake in hiring her.

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    • I’ve had my yahoo mail account since 1996. Right now thanks to the new changes Mrs Google has introduced I am in the process of moving all my registrations across to another mail platform (not Google). Perhaps she is a wolf in the manger, sent by Google to kill off Yahoo. Seems like it’s working. This is the modern world. Makes me sick. World being killed by humdrum middle managers and snidy coniving ‘business breakfast’ types. Douglas Adams idea would be great, send them all off to another planet with all the hopeless X Factor addicts and useless hairdressers.

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  5. How Do I Connect Vista Mail With Yahoo Mail?? I am trying to set up vista mail with yahoo account……i have all the passwords and settings correctly but it still ask me for password……..am i doing anything right(?)

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  6. Marissa Mayer Welcome To The Jungle..You Have Big Shoes To Fill..got Pressure?
    sarah palin, or Marissa Mayer,….woooooo….hooooo …let’s stay together
    lil biddy..Manolo Blahnik’s

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  8. How To Merge Yahoo Mail And Mac Mail? I am trying to add/ merge my yahoo account with my mac mail. I merged my gmail account with my mail with no problem, but not the yahoo. It reads Trying to log into mail server “pop.mail.yahoo.com” failed. This server may require an additional fee for POP access. For more information, visit Yahoo help. I could not find the answer to my question, i was hoping someone can help me out.

    Thanks

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  9. Anyone Else Can’t Stand Marissa Mayer (the Blond Google Lady)? I was listening to audio of a lecture she gave at Stanford. Two things were obviouse.

    #1: She doesn’t hide the fact that in her opinion, if you don’t work at google then you’re a waste of space and oxygen.

    #2: She has the most moronic laugh I’ve ever heard in my life.

    If she’s so freaking genius then she should know better than to sound so tacky.

    And google sucks anyway, the only reason I use it anymore is to get to Yahoo answers and facebook.

    Does anyone know her in real life? Anyone else think she’s rude?

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  11. Anyone Else Can’t Stand Marissa Mayer (the Blond Google Lady)? I was listening to audio of a lecture she gave at Stanford. Two things were obviouse.

    #1: She doesn’t hide the fact that in her opinion, if you don’t work at google then you’re a waste of space and oxygen.

    #2: She has the most moronic laugh I’ve ever heard in my life.

    If she’s so freaking genius then she should know better than to sound so tacky.

    And google sucks anyway, the only reason I use it anymore is to get to Yahoo answers and facebook.

    Does anyone know her in real life? Anyone else think she’s rude?

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  12. Yahoo Go Question .Yahoo Person Please Answer? Hai friends i want to ask one question to yahoo person . Why did the yahoo had not developed its mobile application yahoo go 2.0 for nokia 6630…

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    • I don’t think we can lay the blame entirely at her feet, so no.
      But the creators of this (agreed) atrocity decided to force it down our collective throats for reason known only unto themselves.
      If there are just TWO things a CEO should know about running a business, these are those two things:
      Rule 1 – The customer is always right.
      Rule 2. When the customer is WRONG, refer to Rule 1..

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  15. Outlook Mail In Yahoo Mail? I create yahoo id in ms outlook2007 but my yahoo mails not in in-box. it’ shows only outlook inbox
    I want mail’s in both place. what ill do? help me.

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    • Yahoo! Mail doesn’t support POP except for Yahoo! Mail Plus. To use with outlook with Y! Mail, you must upgrade to plus, or use a localhost webmail-to-POP or IMAP daemon such as YPOPs!

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