User:Simfish/Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo

Recent book, documents Marissa Mayer's rise to power.

Yahoo once used Google's search technology, but it provided free advertising to Google (which helped Google displace Yahoo)

Yahoo and Microsoft wanted to strike deal together but it was botched (Jerry Yang was uncomfortable with merging Yahoo's "jeans and sandals" culture into Microsoft's "suit" culture).

Yahoo imported a CEO who wasn't acquainted with tech, then replaced CEO with another one (who swore often), but she couldn't reverse the company's poor financials, thus she was kicked out.

Even into the mid-2000s, Yahoo was still thriving, though it was starting to "cease to become cool" before it was starting to get into trouble.

Even Thiel advised Zuckerberg to sell to Yahoo (while retaining considerable autonomy). He almost did, but they reduced the deal from $1 bil to $850 million before Zuckerberg decided not to sell.

Marissa Mayer comes off as distant, but had really formative school experiences. She always wanted to work with the smartest team imaginable (hence why she chose X over varsity, and to work with Google over Goldman Sachs - after almost deleting an email Larry Page sent her).