Yahoo CEO tries to reassure partners despite turmoil
SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer found herself in an awkward situation Thursday at the struggling Internet company’s annual conference for the makers of mobile apps.
She had to persuade an auditorium full of programmers and advertising partners that Yahoo will grow into an increasingly important player in the mobile market. This while the company is dramatically shrinking to appease restless shareholders threatening to overthrow management unless things get better.
Just before Mayer’s appearance, Yahoo tried to underscore its long-term commitment to mobile by projecting this statement on a huge screen hanging above the stage: “Imagine what the next seven years will bring.”
It’s not even clear that Yahoo will exist in its current form seven months from now, given that some of its shareholders want the company to sell its Internet operations after 3½ years of declining revenue under Mayer’s leadership. Mayer and the rest of Yahoo’s board is exploring “strategic alternatives” that could include a sale while the Sunnyvale, Calif., company sheds 15 percent of its workforce and closes unprofitable services.
Even though she is deviating from an original turnaround plan, Mayer has steadfastly insisted that Yahoo Inc. will still have a bright future after her latest overhaul.
Mayer touched upon that theme Thursday as she emphasized that Yahoo is still investing heavily in mobile devices despite the massive cutbacks in other areas of the company.
“There is incredible potential here,” she assured the mobile developers. “Together, we can build the future of mobile.”
Unlike her appearance at Yahoo’s inaugural mobile conference last year, Mayer gave a brief presentation before leaving most of the talking to executives that joined her management team after the company bought mobile analytics service Flurry for $270 million in 2014. In another departure, Mayer didn’t hold a news conference after her appearance.
At Thursday’s conference, Yahoo introduced a variety of improvements to Flurry’s app and other tools in an attempt to attract more mobile advertising partners.
Cheetah Mobile, a maker of device management apps such as Clean Master, has been impressed with its results since it started working with Yahoo, said marketing head David Wu.
“We all read the news, so we are obviously aware of the problems at Yahoo, but all the numbers have been moving in the right direction for us, so we hope they can stick around,” Wu said.