Mayer was undercut by miscues, bad breaks
Wausau native’s Yahoo legacy a mixed bag
SAN FRANCISCO - The slow, inexorable demise of Marissa Mayer as Yahoo CEO has reached its long-anticipated end.
Nearly five years after she took on the onerous job of turning around the gasping internet icon, Mayer exited the scene with the completion of Verizon’s acquisition of Yahoo on Tuesday. A new business, combining Yahoo and Verizon property AOL, called Oath, will be run by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong.
Mayer, a native of Wausau, resigned when the transaction closed. “Verizon wishes Mayer well in her future endeavors,” Oath said in a statement.
The 42-year-old Mayer’s departure is expected to land her $186 million in total compensation — far beyond the golden parachute of $23 million Yahoo said she would receive — according to securities filings.
Mayer, who all but vanished the past year after a highly visible start at Yahoo, had no comment. In one of her few public statements, upon Verizon’s announced acquisition in July 2016, she said, “For me personally, I’m planning to stay. I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you. It’s important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter.”
In a Tumblr post titled “Nostalgia, Gratitude & Optimism,” Mayer said, “Looking back on my time at Yahoo, we have confronted seemingly insurmountable business challenges, along with many surprise twists and turns.” She said Yahoo had successfully navigated those hurdles “and mountains in ways that have not only made Yahoo a better company, but also made all of us far stronger.”
Her resignation was inevitable, analysts say, once Verizon agreed to buy Yahoo’s digital assets for $4.8 billion — since amended to $4.48 billion following repeated hacking scandals — and the remnants of Yahoo was renamed Altaba. “Mayer took on a challenge that may not have been solvable,” says Jeff Kagan, an independent tech analyst. “She tried her best, but it wasn’t good enough.”
The legacy of Mayer, once hailed as a Google-trained savior when she was tapped as Yahoo CEO in July 2012, was decidedly mixed. Under Mayer, company shares rocketed 254%, from $15 to $53.12; the tech-laden Nasdaq market, by comparison, rose 27%.
The stock performance was all the more remarkable, tech analysts say, when considering the circumstances under which Mayer joined Yahoo. She was the Silicon Valley company’s seventh CEO, a list that included Scott Thompson (disputed résumé), Ross Levinsohn (interim) and Terry Semel (who commuted from Southern California.) And she was inheriting a ship taking on water: Google and Facebook had eviscerated Yahoo’s once-healthy share of online advertising worldwide. Yahoo’s net ad revenue is projected to decline to $3 billion this year from $3.32 billion in 2015, according to eMarketer.
“She had a fairly good run, but got all the bad breaks,” says Bill Klepper, a management professor at Columbia Graduate School of Business. “How can you stop a Russian hacker? And she got hit twice.”
As Yahoo scrambled to compete in an era increasingly dominated by mobile apps and social media, it welcomed Mayer, who had earned her bona fides as an early Google employee. She hit the ground running with an aggressive strategy of acquisitions and executive hires, and graced a magazine spread in Vanity Fair as one of the world’s most recognizable female CEOs.
But Mayer’s Sisyphean task was undercut by a series of miscues, some of which she had a hand in. There were two massive data breaches that affected hundreds of millions of Yahoo accounts. The wisdom of acquisitions such as the $1.1 billion purchase of social media site Tumblr were questioned. And high-salaried employees like Katie Couric, paid a reported $10 million a year, didn’t bring in viewers or generate much buzz.
“She came in with a very, very daunting task,” says Greg Sterling, a contributing editor at Search Engine Land, a site that covers the search industry. “She was asked to revive the ad business when Facebook came along with superior technology and Google made a push into display ads.”
“She did a good job in building a search business that didn’t exist, and re-establish Yahoo’s credibility in the market,” Sterling says. “She re-invigorated flagging morale and the brand name. People, in time, will see her as someone who shepherded the company to its next phase, as part of Verizon.”