Yahoo buying Tumblr for $1.1 billion, vows not to screw it up

[Caliga]

Didn't she get promoted thru the ranks at Google because she was banging one of the co-founders, basically?

If so, I like her style.

[Valmy]

Didn't she get promoted thru the ranks at Google because she was banging one of the co-founders, basically?

If so, I like her style.

Well to be CEO. even at Yahoo, at 37 she has to either be one heck of a networker or some sort of prodigy.  I would never insinuate something so improper though...shame on you sir!  Are you no gentleman?

[garbon]

Btw, can someone provide a link to terrible things Mayer has done? Despite protestations in this thread that she's awful and everyone knows it - I can't find anything quick when I google her name.

[CountDeMoney]

Well to be CEO. even at Yahoo, at 37 she has to either be one heck of a networker or some sort of prodigy.

She is a bit of a brain.

Mayer graduated with honors from Stanford University with a B.S. in symbolic systems and an M.S. in computer science. For both degrees, she specialized in artificial intelligence.

[Caliga]

I suspect there's a bit of misogyny at play here.  "She's 'young', female, and attractive.... she CAN'T POSSIBLY have the chops to run a company."

'course I was the one to bring up the bit about her banging one of the Google dudes.   Pretty sure that's the truth, though.

[Valmy]

I suspect there's a bit of misogyny at play here.

In the Tech industry?  No that is impossible, it must be something different.

[frunk]

I suspect there's a bit of misogyny at play here.  "She's 'young', female, and attractive.... she CAN'T POSSIBLY have the chops to run a company."

'course I was the one to bring up the bit about her banging one of the Google dudes.   Pretty sure that's the truth, though.

I dunno, employee #20, at that point Google wasn't very big at all.  That kind of stupidity usually comes later, and I don't think Google would have come as far as it did if 1/20th of their staff was just for eye candy.

[Caliga]

I wasn't trying to say that at all, but yeah... according to wiki at least she dated Larry Page.

[DontSayBanana]

You're talking about an incredibly powerful woman with a brain for computer science.  Digging up dirt on her is going to be hard when you're talking about somebody who knows probably a dozen ways to scrub an internet presence.

[DGuller]

I wasn't trying to say that at all, but yeah... according to wiki at least she dated Larry Page.

It doesn't have to be either/or.  Generally stratospheric success requires both immense ability and immense luck.  You have to be in the right place at the right time, but you also have to have the skills to actually take advantage of your luck.

[garbon]

You're talking about an incredibly powerful woman with a brain for computer science.  Digging up dirt on her is going to be hard when you're talking about somebody who knows probably a dozen ways to scrub an internet presence.

So you've no proof of someone you haven't met being unpleasant?

[garbon]

http://news.yahoo.com/yahoo-reportedly-bidding-least-600-million-hulu-193500190.html

Yahoo reportedly bidding at least $600 million for Hulu

So how much will it take for Yahoo to buy itself a stake in Hulu? According to a new report from AllThingsD, at least $600 million. Citing "numerous sources close to the situation," AllThingsD reports that Yahoo is bidding between $600 million and $800 million for Hulu, a range that reflects the fact that Yahoo "has proposed several different prices based on a variety of circumstances" including "the length of the licensing rights for content and how much control the programming companies selling Hulu have over their media."

Yahoo's bid for Hulu is a sign that the company is still considering ways to counter the enormous video streaming clout that Google now holds with YouTube. Yahoo was interested in buying a majority stake in French video streaming website Dailymotion earlier this year but that deal fell apart after the French government reportedly threatened to block it. In making an official bid for Hulu, Yahoo will be competing with Time Warner Cable, which is considering buying a 33% equity stake in the company.

WTF? I guess she's going for go big or go home.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Well, pretty much the only reason she's CEO of Yahoo is an ego thing. She had so much Google stock that I understand she was worth well over $300m before taking the Yahoo job, at that level of wealth whatever your CEO compensation is that's almost certainly not why you're taking any given job.

I don't read whatever bullshit blogs or retard-Journals that guys like Raz and Dguller read but in the WSJ she's not really gotten flack for anything. She's basically been commended for trying to renegotiate unfavorable deals Yahoo had previously signed and to leverage Yahoo's cash to try and get it into new revenue streams. Right now Yahoo is still a profitable display advertising company but primarily that is based off of visitors to its Yahoo branded sites and its search engine, both of which are slowly dying in popularity. So the only real way to fix that would be to either make Yahoo itself more popular and drive traffic back to it, or use your existing profitability to diversify so the company itself survives the original revenue stream drying up (sort of an "IBM" style evolution.)

She discontinued telecommuting at Yahoo, and for some reason that engendered really huge amounts of hostility in some quarters, but her argument basically was, "I don't think people work well in IT teams as telecommuters." Considering Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft basically don't allow telecommuting for that same reason I'm not 100% sure I buy into it being a bad move. I think the size of the Yahoo telecommuting workforce wasn't big anyway, so it was people making mountains out of molehills. Now, it might make sense when you're just working a bunch of IT contracts like IBM to have a lot of telecommuting IT support drones randomly assigned all over the country but that only really makes sense for IBM (and the drones to a degree.) Pretty much every industry article I've ever read (and the real bad ones branch out into mainstream press), those big contracts where IBM takes over an entire company's IT or an entire State's IT have been almost universally hated by the customer and resulted in horrific degradation of IT services.

I also think Mayer got some flak because she had a child and had a personal nursery set up next to her office and that was seen as an "unfair perk" because other Yahoo employees don't have that. But last I checked CEOs get lots of perks the regular employees do not.

[Jacob]

It's kind of a facile truism, but it's still true - in the end she'll be judged on the results during her watch.

[DGuller]

I don't read whatever bullshit blogs or retard-Journals that guys like Raz and Dguller read but in the WSJ she's not really gotten flack for anything.

What blogs do I read?  Honest question, I didn't realize I read any.