https://next.ft.com/content/c8f8176c-5285-11e6-9664-e0bdc13c3bef
It’s easy for anyone to criticize someone for failures. I think Marissa Mayer @marissamayer was right on so many things that happened at Yahoo. But in the brutal and ruthless tech world, you need to get everything right. Not 90%, not 95% …its 100% correct all times. Timing is everything. Watch this Ted Talk below…
Lets take a look a few years back. As late as 2008, BlackBerry was the king of smart phones and Nokia was ruling the global cellphone markets. Their CEOs were as powerful as one could get. They both got the touch screen and fully integrated iPhone of Apple. Then Google bought a small company called Android for just $50Million and rest is history. 5 years later both Nokia and Blackberry were knocked out fully.
Ms. Mayer did attempt to fix Yahoo. Could Yahoo have become Pepsi (v/s Coke) of Search engine to Google? Probably. She should have set moderate goals and did What Steve Jobs did. Focus, Focus, Focus only on search. Not too many areas too many products etc.
My unsolicited advice – Talk to Satya Nadella (@satyanadella )and go fix Bing: Only search engine. Nothing else.
She is a great leader and will bounce back. Best place would be Microsoft Bing.
Cheers,
Giri Devanur