Marissa Mayer, Yahoo's Ex-CEO, Says She's Looking 'Forward To Using Gmail Again' 187
Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who resigned on Tuesday after running the company for about five years, appeared at a conference in London today. At the conference, Mayer said one of the things she was looking forward to in her post-Yahoo life was using Gmail again. "I am always faster when using a tool I designed myself," she added.
Irrelevant (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Irrelevant (Score:5, Funny)
As one of the 100 legitimate Yahoo users remaining, i respectfully disagree with you!
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As one of the 100 legitimate Yahoo users remaining, i respectfully disagree with you!
Sent from Windows Phone
FTFY
RRK
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Nice to meet you, Legitimate Yahoo User.
I'm a unicorn, and I'd like to introduce my cousin, Bigfoot . . .
hawk
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I bet I was not the only one who read it like "Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who resigned on Tuesday after ruining the company for about five years"
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I suppose it's feasible she directed Yahoo to secretly make a time machine, then went back to the late nineties and said "Hey guys, I'm from the future, here's the winning plan:
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Because Yahoo was doing great before she joined?
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It was.
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No, it was in trouble for years before she joined. The company went through a series of CEOs to help right the ship and they all failed. They brought in experienced CEOs from other companies, both technology and media. Also, Mayer was not the first woman; Carol Bartz came from Autodesk in 2009, where she built that company to become the powerhouse of engineering and media creation tools. In reality, Yahoo was in trouble the moment curated directories and web portals lost fashion.
Yahoo screwed up numerous acquistions before Mayer (Score:5, Informative)
First one that comes to mind is Flickr. Yahoo bought Flickr, at the time the premier photo site on the web, and proceeded to do nothing to keep it current and competitive. They were developing the ability to geotag photos by dropping on a map which languished for 5+ years allowing Google to bypass them and they could have eaten Instagram's lunch if they had been paying attention.
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But if you check her own wiki page ...
"In 2005 she became Vice President of Search Products and User Experience. Mayer held key roles in Google Search, Google Images, Google News, Google Maps, Google Books, Google Product Search, Google Toolbar, iGoogle, and Gmail." (with a citation for a 2008 article)
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I guess you didn't have any stock then. For the stockholders who saw its value nearly double during her tenure, after a long slide down before, I think her time there was pretty relevant.
I didn't have any stock either.
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I see it as quite relevant. Under her leadership YahooGroups! was destroyed. Does she claim design ownership of that too? The changes to YahooGroups drove people away and killed a community. That was about the only thing that Yahoo was useful for. Sad times.
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Ah..I think I get it (Score:5, Insightful)
I think I'm beginning to get what happened to yahoo.
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I think I'm beginning to get what happened to yahoo.
Employing them?
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What happened is that Jerry Yang was an idiot when he turned down Microsoft's 2008 offer to buy the company for 10x what Verizon paid.
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Right, then Stephen Elop would have been put in charge and Yahoo would have been dead by 2010.
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At least Bing would have had a catchier name.
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Binoo? Binhoo? Boo?
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It already has been effectively dead since 2010. Beyond buying and destroying other companies what else has Yahoo accomplished?
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I'm looking forward to more Little Critter books. (Score:1)
For my Toddler. Go write some more when you're done!
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Someone should do a "Boy Bears are Bad" Little Critter spoof cover. I'm not much of an artist, but I may attempt it anyways, of course attributing the book to Marissa Mayer.
Thoughts I collected from googlers on Marissa is.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I know a few folks from early google. They are not fond of this Marissa Mayer character. She was in the first 20 or so hires and the general consensus was that if she wasn't there google would still be google - her being there or not would have had no impact on outcome. They also indicated she was a land grabber. This would mean that her saying she designed gmail means she attended a few meetings about it. They also indicated that they would basically fence her - they would create the illusion she mattered to keep her at bay (Yes, Marissa. Sure, good idea Marissa. Oh, we'll get right on that Marissa).
I did not like her for one specific thing, the idea that she could create a live-in office with day care at work for her progeny but the rank and file had to work in person in the most expensive real-estate area in the world with bad traffic. Ultimately yahoo japan and yahoo's investments were worth something. Everything she did at yahoo-central was more or less zero in the end. Amazing Verizon paid for it.
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OH NOES!!! How DARE someone benefit by taking the effort to recommend a relevant link?
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What are you just upset because someone uses a system the way it's designed?
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Given a weaker company with 100% pay and on site childcare, or a stronger company with 90% pay, I would definitely choose the one with on site childcare.
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Re:Thoughts I collected from googlers on Marissa i (Score:5, Informative)
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Haven't you just described what every executive does? You don't get to the top by being humble and letting credit ever go to someone else.
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What's so good about Google? I don't get it. They sell ads and spam the Internet with them. Big freakin' deal.
What an ass (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What an ass (Score:5, Insightful)
What an ass she is. That comment just insured that she'll never be hired again as a CEO. Burning bridges never goes well.
Unless she's after a job at Google
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What an ass she is. That comment just insured that she'll never be hired again as a CEO. Burning bridges never goes well.
Unless she's after a job at Google
Or one at Oracle.
Re:What an ass (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:What an ass (Score:4, Funny)
Separate note on how moronic your comment is: you think that a joke that she's going to use gmail now is going to cause her not to be hired, but not saving Yahoo isn't?
Considering how nonsensical the executive world is... I guess?
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but not saving Yahoo isn't?
What do you mean "not saving"? The shares had been in a slide since 2004. She came on board, and nearly doubled the price in her time there, then the company sold. I'd say from the shareholders point of view, that was a pretty good end to the game.
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What an ass she is. That comment just insured that she'll never be hired again as a CEO. Burning bridges never goes well.
Her Yahoo stock holdings alone are worth over $200 million. She can buy her own bridge.
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Hardly. She worked for 2 companies. She likes one of their products more than the other. Of the things I'd judge her for (failing to turn Yahoo around and taking the job at all come to mind), her comment is irrelevant.
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Of the things I'd judge her for (failing to turn Yahoo around and taking the job at all come to mind)
Only on slashdot could nearly doubling the value of a company after a prior long decline be counted as "failing to turn around".
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I could've made yahoo more profitable than she did, by immediately shutting down all the company's activities without selling off any Ali Baba stock in her failed attempt to rekindle the business.
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That comment just insured that she'll never be hired again as a CEO.
And your complete ignorance on the topic is why you won't be one ... but she will again.
Did she actually design gmail? (Score:1)
My instinct is to completely doubt that she had any serious involvement in design because she's an executive type, what did she do manage the project? wiki only says:
Mayer held key roles in Google Search, Google Images, Google News, Google Maps, Google Books, Google Product Search, Google Toolbar, iGoogle, and Gmail.
Not specifically what role.
Re:Did she actually design gmail? (Score:4, Funny)
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She was employee #20. Like it or not, Google wasnt hiring for random c-level positions that early on, so she mist have pulled her weight just fine. Maybe later on she transitioned into the typical useless manager role, but that's it.
I seen several people do that. I think the common thread was that they didn't really enjoy engineering and were competent at it but no match for their peers. So they doggedly took the path to management where their engineering skills did not matter at all but their BS skills were paramount.
faster at what? (Score:5, Informative)
Faster at what? Running a company into the ground? [businessinsider.com] Firing male workers? [mercurynews.com] Complaining of sexism? [fortune.com]
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Faster at claiming to have designed something outright that you probably just commented on... some "project managers" think they had way more input into the design process by dropping a few words in a meeting than they actually did.
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Or wait! Maybe she KNEW yahoo would be run into the ground and THAT'S WHY SHE KEPT 63% MEN AS HER EMPLOYEES!!!
Seriously, this is one lawsuit alleging as part of it's claims that sexism might have been involved at a company that was still a majority men by far. I'm guessing she DID fire more men than women: that's to be expected when most of the workers are men. She also probably fired far far more white people than she did peop
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The lawsuit alleges much worse misconduct than that; I suggest you read it. Whether the lawsuit has merit, I don't know and I don't care.
Based on her public statements, I certainly think Mayer is a bigot and a sexist, but then, like most men, I also think that the best way of dealing with bigots and sexists is to simply chang
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The lawsuit alleges much worse misconduct than that; I suggest you read it. Whether the lawsuit has merit, I don't know and I don't care.
You literally don't care whether the lawsuit has any merit, you're only focused on the accusation of sexism? Hmm....
I certainly think Mayer is a bigot and a sexist...
Sounds like it took quite a bit to convince you of that.
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No, I literally don't care. I think corporate efforts at diversity are bullshit. Companies should focus on hiring the best people they can regardless of sex or skin color and on making the most money they can.
No, not much at all; it's pretty obvious.
Have Some Dignity! (Score:5, Insightful)
After being paid $260million at Yahoo for being utterly incompetent, you'd expect her to at least have the decency to leave with some dignity. Instead she immediately starts promoting a competitor's product, which comes across as being childish and spiteful.
If she thought her own company's products were so bad she should have fixed them while she was in charge instead of waiting until she left and then criticising them.
The only thing that gave Yahoo any value is that the previous CEO, Jerry Yang, had made a large investment in Alibaba. If it weren't for that Yahoo would have been worthless. It takes a person of low moral character to take $260million while running a company into the ground and then to criticise the company after you've left.
Re:Have Some Dignity! (Score:5, Insightful)
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I thought it was a gmail clone. Both my yahoo mail and my gmail come in via pop and look identical through roundcube webmail. They must be copying from each other!
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The YM app recently became a Gmail clone, that's why I had to uninstall it. Now I POP my Yahoo mail in order to limit what data they have sitting around to analyze. The App has started noticeably pulling names and content from mail to add wiz-bangs to the UI. They forced me to upgrade to the current app. It took all of an hour for me to downgrade my trust level from zero to negative 2 and completely uninstall the YM app.
Time to finally kill the yahoo.com address. Whatever Verizon does will not be in the cus
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As another user of yahoo mail for about 25 years now, the new interface they introduced several years ago is terrible.
My job implemented new content rules to prevent access to web-based email. I no longer see YM (personal) or GM (contracting agency). Now I need to monitor email on my iPhone in case something important arrives.
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Luckily for you, creimer, nothing of import will ever arrive in your inbox. So, good looking out. That's not even an active job search.
I still get 20+ emails and phone calls from recruiters every day.
The fact that you're a contractor who makes a habit of checking your personal mail during the work day using your employer's resources speaks volumes about your professionalism, too.
Management was way more upset about not being able to access their personal email.
[...] do you arrive at work, start your script running, and then tuck into Slashdot for 8 hours?
My required work takes one hour. For the remaining seven hours, I'm listening to 30 people on the headset waiting for stuff to roll down hill. I occasionally run PowerShell scripts, update spreadsheets and create tickets for site techs.
My side business takes up another eight hours when I get home. Revamping three book titles for next month's summer/winter sale at
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I don't know how it looks on iphone, but the app on android is a slow and bloated mess.
I don't use the YM app on iPhone. I'm using Mail since this is personal email. I do have the GM app for work emails and that isn't too bad.
20% project (Score:2)
Wasn't Gmail a 20% project? If so, wouldn't that mean that most likely she didn't design it?
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If you say 'gmail is just a rebranded webamail' you don't remember e-mail before google.
Of course It's not to Marissa's merit, otherwise Yahoo web-mail wouldn't still be the unintuitive, constantly changing shit that's still today. On the other hand Hotmail/Outlook evolved quite fine.
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I thought they bought gmail mostly working and rebranded it.
No it was built internally over several iterations. Even when they finally went closed beta in 2004 it was undergoing a lot of change.
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Wasn't Gmail a 20% project? If so, wouldn't that mean that most likely she didn't design it?
I don't think Google had the official 20% policy back then; GMail went closed beta back in early 2004. Apparently it was a fully supported internal project [wikipedia.org] - they asked a Google Groups developer to work on it, fleshed it out with a better UI and more features, used it internally for a while, and then went beta. (I realise Wikipedia isn't always a reliable source, but the text cites two references that seem reputable.)
And I've never heard anyone mention Mayer's involvement in it before.
Twitter (Score:5, Informative)
Since when do folks actually quote twitter as a news reference? And quoting some no-body twitter account that claims to be quoting someone else is NOT reference source.
I mean seriously people, might as well quote "The Sun".
There are many things (Score:2)
Bloody Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
Affirmative Action (Score:1)
More like affirmative action: the art of getting promoted for being a woman or other minority despite having no competence
Her golden parachute (Score:1)
Did it not have a non-disparage clause? I can't imagine Verizon wouldn't have added one, right? Couldn't that statement be seen as a violation of that clause? Since she is saying in public that a competitors product is superior?
Shitstorms never strike twice? (Score:5, Insightful)
So as a department-head at Google she "designed" Gmail, yet at the absolute ruler of Yahoo, she couldn't make a YahooMail work?
Seems that Gmail is good despite her involvement.
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And me without modpoints.
Best thing anyone's said so far - most have been generic shit talking about her. But you made a very nice, constrained point.
addin insult to injury (Score:2)
must be great hearing this from your ex-boss, who drove your shop to the wall, if you're a Yahoo employee
I never particularly liked her (Score:1)
But to be fair, yahoo was doomed well before she arrived.
Well Then... (Score:2)
At the conference, Mayer said one of the things she was looking forward to in her post-Yahoo life was using Gmail again. "I am always faster when using a tool I designed myself," she added.
It is too bad she did not redesign Yahoo Mail. Then the company would have gotten something of value from her tenure.
Webmail (Score:3)
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Inbox by Gmail does have this functionality. I use it quite often.
It also has the ability to snooze emails (hide, then reappear at the top on a specified date/time), use reminders (same thing as an email to yourself with just a subject line), scrape pertinent info from a common email (like an Amazon purchase) and display it in an easy-to-read format at the top of the email, and save links as a clickable item instead of sending them in the body/subject of an email. And the bundling of emails is MUCH better t
Re: Webmail (Score:2)
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Which part? I'm browsing around in Firefox and can do all the same functionality as using it in Chrome. Mass selection, snoozing, reminders, all of it.
She design what? (Score:1)
Re:She design what? (Score:5, Funny)
Marissa Mayer did not invent Gmail.
Everyone knows that was Shiva Ayyadurai.
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Crap, you had me there for a minute.
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I hope she has army of good lawyers (Score:2)
Most mergers and acquisitions have clause where high ranking officers cannot deliberately defame company or its products and services and if they do so, they may lose golden parachute. This statement is definitely materially damaging to Yahoo's reputation (whatever little is left) and I expect a lawsuit by Verizon followed by private settlement. I would be surprised if there is no lawsuit.
So Marissa Mayer will type like a machine gun? (Score:1)
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Yahoo is/was still a thing... (Score:2)
So everyone is shitting on Marissa Mayer, but remember she's kept the sinking ship that is Yahoo around many more years than I ever expect it survive. Sure, it should have been put out of it's misery long ago, but to drag it out this long is a feat.
How may of you complaining about her running it to the ground ever used a Yahoo service? In a post-google-search world (aka, not when the alternative was alta vista or ask jeeves)?
This does not help improve my view of her (Score:1)