Optimistic Response To Mayer's Yahoo Appointment
Beyond shock and awe, what does the tech industry make of Marissa Mayer leaving Google for Yahoo?
“There may be hope,” search expert Danny Sullivan tweeted Monday. “It's the perfect fit,” tweeted Twitter creator Jack Dorsey.
“She’s not just a dream candidate for Yahoo,” pandodaily founder and editor-in-chief Sarah Lacy wrote regarding Mayer. “She’s a dream candidate for nearly anyone.”
“It's a huge statement on the part of [Yahoo’s] board that they want the company to be product-led,” star VC Marc Andreessen tells Business Insider. “I say that because they had a great CEO if they wanted to be media-led,” Andreessen said regarding interim CEO Ross Levinsohn. “It's a huge double down on product.”
“Mayer is completely out of Yahoo’s league,” claims Michael Arrington. “But it happened. And overnight Yahoo’s reputation will change.”
“After a succession of terrible CEOs, Yahoo finally has a good one with Mayer, or at least one who is under 40,” Alexia Tsotsis writes in TechCrunch. “If anything, what AOL competitor Yahoo needs right now is youth, hipness.”
Not everyone, however, is sold on Mayer’s marriage to Yahoo.
“Yahoo! needs a strategic visionary, not a product engineer,” Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirk writes on her blog. “Yahoo!'s fundamental problem is that it has too many disparate products with no clear unifying thread that ties them all together. And Mayer's background is in product development...not corporate strategy, not marketing, not brand definition...the areas where Yahoo! has the most critical need.”
Similarly, Gartner analyst Allen Weiner blogs that Mayer’s “engineering and product skill set are more of a match for Yahoo’s needs a decade ago rather than its current needs as a technology-based media company.”
“Having closely watched Yahoo through most of these CEOs, it’s hard to be optimistic,” pandodaily’s Lacy adds. “I think an organization this beleaguered, this bloated, this siloed needs more than a great CEO. But I can say for the first time in the last three CEO hires, Yahoo may have its first real shot at regaining relevance in a long time.”
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