Mayer Should Look Beyond Search

Steve Jobs, in his second coming, did not try to win the PC wars. Instead he declared the PC wars are over, and Microsoft won. Google won the search war, it's pretty much over.

Mayer should look beyond. The local and mobile wars are not over. The social war is also not fully over.

Search can not be shut down, that's there. It is a key web function. But it would be a major resource swamp to try to take the lead there. It's just not possible, and Mayer would know.

Unless there is a way to fundamentally reinvent search. I don't think Mayer would be that inventor, and the best engineers in search are already with Google.

Never say never, but I hope Mayer is not having major thoughts on search.

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Was Mayer's Hand Forced?

If it was, she is saddled with a Board that does not wish to win - (yes, that's possible). If she wasn't, I don't think she is the next Steve Jobs. Giving billions away to shareholders is too big a mistake at this juncture of Yahoo's history. I guess Yahoo will stay in the middle leagues.

I am not writing her off. I am not writing Yahoo off. I think she deserves something like three years before judgment should be passed. What I am saying is this was a bad move. The cash should not have been returned.

Marissa Mayer Was Not Forced By Yahoo's Board To Return Cash To Shareholders

Mayer wanted to use the cash to buy and make cool products and, thus, make Yahoo a Silicon Valley powerhouse again ..... some tech observers concluded that Marissa Mayer is little more than a popular puppet and that the board is really running the company ..... the decision to return ~$3 billion of cash to shareholders was Mayer's decision, albeit one that was supported and desired by the board..... Later, after conducting the necessary analysis, Mayer decided that returning ~$3 billion of the proceeds to shareholders did, actually, make sense, so she proposed that plan to the board. And the board accepted it...... Even after the cash is returned, Yahoo will have more than $3 billion of cash. It will also likely generate some more cash from the sale of the rest of the Alibaba stake and the sale of its stake in Yahoo Japan. And it's still generating more than $1 billion of cash a year.

It Looks Like Yahoo's Board Kind Of Screwed Over Marissa Mayer This Week

Can Marissa Mayer pull off a Steve Jobs, who began turning Apple around by launching the bondi Blue iMac, and really made things work with the miraculous iPod? .... Mayer, the board believes, is the next Steve Jobs. ..... Yahoo's iPod, by the way, won't likely be a hardware product--it will be software. And it will probably be a bunch of products, all designed to make Yahoo and better content and advertising platform ...... a gadget that disintermediates the smartphone the way Google Glass might. It could buy several startups that make popular mobile applications that have growing engagement with normal, non-techy Americans ...... This particular act of largesse happens to very much benefit one of Yahoo's biggest shareholders, hedge fund manager Dan Loeb, who, incidentally, was instrumental in bringing in Marissa Mayer as CEO....... Loeb happens to also be a Yahoo board member. In fact, by the accounts of several insiders, Loeb is doing the job that a board chairman does, even if that title actually belongs to another board member, Fred Amoroso...... will still leave Mayer with more than $3 billion to work with ..... a lot of cash for a ~$5 billion business ..... still seems odd that Loeb would make the short term cash grab and restrict Yahoo's flexibility. And Mayer might be feeling a little screwed over because of it. It also makes you wonder who is really in charge at Yahoo...... there is a way for her to add about another $2 billion to $3 billion to her cash pile by selling off Yahoo Japan and the rest of the Alibaba stake

Yahoo! Closes $7.6B Alibaba Deal as Marissa Mayer Gets Down to Business

Yahoo! has struggled to come up with a coherent business strategy ..... there are signs of renewed vigor at the company, as Mayer lays the foundation for the “Marissa era.” ..... for the first time in years, Yahoo!’s fortunes seem to be on the rise ...... An accomplished engineer with a sharp eye for design, Mayer joined Google in 1999 after earning undergraduate and graduate degrees at Stanford University, where she specialized in artificial intelligence. At Google, Mayer built a reputation as a brilliant and intense executive with a passion for the “the user experience.” She played a major role in developing Google’s iconic search box layout, and would eventually become responsible for many of Google’s most successful products, including Gmail, Google News, and Google Maps...... a weekly all-hands meeting on Fridays — a classic Google practice ..... Mayer’s real challenge will be outlining a vision and strategy for the company’s turn-around, not to mention actually executing on that strategy. ...... we are still waiting for the new CEO and her team to layout a strategy to revitalize the company

With billions of dollars from the Alibaba deal, what should Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer do next?

By no means has she righted the ship, but she has, for the moment, encouraged critics to hit the mute button. ..... Turn Yahoo into a local commerce juggernaut. .... Local commerce remains the Web's great white whale. It is an enormous opportunity. But no company has fully been able to capture it. The best way for Yahoo to do that would be to use the windfall from the Alibaba deal to quickly gobble up three high-profile companies that could become the foundation of a local commerce strategy: Groupon, Yelp and Foursquare. ..... buy Mayer more time to clarify where she wants to take Yahoo. ..... Rather than chasing something like search or social that is owned by someone else (Google and Facebook), local commerce remains wide open. ..... Groupon's current market value is $3.07 billion. Yelp is currently worth $1.47 billion. Foursquare, which is still private, is reportedly valued at $600 million. That's more than $4 billion, plus the likely need to pay a premium over these prices.

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Motorola RAZR i

New Motorola Razr i: Intel Inside and 20 hours of battery life

a faster clock speed of 2 GHz ..... Motorola’s battery life estimate for the Razr i is the same as the M: 40 percent more than Apple’s iPhone 4S with up to 20 hours of mixed use on a single charge. ..... Intel has a solid chance to make some headway in mobile market; something that appeared impossible back in 2010.

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What Yahoo Could Have Done With $4.3 Billion?

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - OCTOBER 18: Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley speaks during the 2011 Web 2.0 Summit on October 18, 2011 in San Francisco, California. The 2011 Web 2.0 Summit features keynote addresses by Internet and Technology leaders and runs through Wednesday. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Bad Move For Yahoo

$1 billion -- Try to buy FourSquare. They will not be bought. But the noise would be good for Yahoo. Go buy someone else in the local space for $500 million or less.

$500 million -- Revamp Flickr. Make it mobile first. Make it free.

$500 million -- Revamp Yahoo Mail.

$1 billion -- Make another attempt at FourSquare six months later. They will not be bought. Go buy someone else for $300 million.

$500 million -- Hire some of the best of the best engineers in the Valley, like 100 of them. Make many small acquisitions just to get the talent.

$1 billion -- Keep in the bank, just in case.

Yahoo To Give Shareholders $3.65 Billion, Mayer Explains Why In Leaked Memo

Giving money back to shareholders makes no sense. I no longer see Yahoo getting the sexy back. Or at least it just made that task so much harder for itself. Why? But why?

Bad Move For Yahoo

This is the first time I am having doubts about Marissa Mayer as Yahoo CEO. That or the powers that be at Yahoo have undermined her. This was supposed to be Yahoo's turnaround money.

Now Marissa Mayer is supposed to rely on Yahoo's meager revenues to turn the ship around. That is a tall task.

I am in disbelief. $650 million is not a "meaningful amount" to turn around Yahoo. I guess Yahoo is headed for some same old, same old. It can now no longer do a major acquisition.

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Giving a couple billion dollars back to Yahoo shareholders from this sale was the plan before Mayer took over Yahoo. A couple weeks after she joined, Mayer put out of an SEC filing saying she was reconsidering the move. ..... it will not leave Yahoo fundmanetally better off the way a smart investment in a new product or acquisition would.

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