Google's Marissa Mayer Becomes Yahoo! CEO 302
D H NG writes "Marissa Mayer, Google's employee #20 and Vice President of Local, has been appointed CEO of Yahoo. She was Google's public face for years, famously being responsible for the look and feel of Google's most popular products: the famously unadorned white search homepage, Gmail, Google News and Google Images. Mayer resigned from Google Monday afternoon and will begin her new job on Tuesday."
Re:Ship is sinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh?
I'm confused. I guess that I didn't understand right, I thought that we users were the product, and the customers were the advertising agencies and companies that pay Google to deliver our views/time to them...
Re:Ship is sinking (Score:1, Insightful)
No, you understood it right. We should be viewed as the customers not a product. Until Google realizes that, they can go suck eggs and hopefully they'll get slapped with more fines due to abusing people's privacy.
Seems like a funny choice (Score:5, Insightful)
She spent her time working at a company that has a good product and a pretty solid streak of good years.
Yahoo is stuck with lots of products that nobody wants anymore and flailing to find what to cut and what to keep. Those kinds of decisions are much more difficult that riding a rocket like Google's last decade. CEOs who turn around failing companies are not pragmatic technologists or engineers, but either cutthroats or visionaries with a killer instinct.
Re:Ship is sinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, the definition of your 'customer' is someone who gives you money. Did you remember to pay the Google bill this month? Didn't think so.
Re:yahoo might actually have a chance now (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Non-compete? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm curious if she had a non-compete clause in her contract, and how it will all work out if she does. Any Google employees who know the details on their typical contracts?
No matter what's in a typical Google contract, hers is certainly different. She was a top-level executive for some time, then one rung down the ladder. She has hundreds of millions of dollars. There's no way she agreed to disadvantageous terms.
Ashamed of this site (Score:3, Insightful)
I would kindly refer everyone here to geekfeminism.org since all those sexist comments are awful, you should be better than that.
Re:best thing to happen to Yahoo (Score:3, Insightful)
She has 0 CEO experience.
In a case like this you need a rockstar CEO who is top rated and has a proven track record as Yahoo is not stable right now.
Back to products hopefully! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ship is sinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Without users Google has no "product" to sell.
There is a distinction that can be drawn between "customer" and "consumer." The average Joe might not be Google's primary "customer" but he is their primary "consumer" ... and without consumers Google is out of business.
It's a total logical fallacy to assume that Google doesn't need to treat their consumers right, and only needs to pander to the people who buy their advertising services. Their advertising services are worth nothing without the consumers, and that makes "us" important (no, essential) to Google's bottom line.
Re:Non-compete? (Score:5, Insightful)
IANAL but my understanding is that non-compete clauses are binding in California if you are compensated for your lost opportunities (not just your lost income, but lost business opportunities as well.).
The compensation requirement makes enforceable non-compete clauses very rare in California
Re:Ship is sinking (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ship is sinking (Score:5, Insightful)
This woman is brilliant. Maybe she'll find a way. Certainly she won't have any trouble getting the press to show up for her events. Pretty CEO = Lots of clicks, therefore ad views, therefore lots of coverage. So whatever they do she won't have a hard time letting people know about it. She should exploit that as much as possible. Slashdot may as well add an icon of her mug right now.
She should also go over the top with the Community partnership, green energy, great Place to work, human interest type articles. Maybe fly a few columnists out at a time, all the time to bring Yahoo home to the local communities they serve all over the world - have an office dedicated to that. Build the community love.
Sales and process types wind up at the top of corporations after a while, and Yahoo's got more than a few of those. It probably won't take her long to find out which ones are stuffed shirts with empty hats. That part is easy. Finding the right people to sit in those chairs is hard.
Re:yahoo might actually have a chance now (Score:4, Insightful)
If all Yahoo are is a company of cowering cubicle moles, trying not to be noticed and whacked, there's not much she or anyone can do.
I don't know about that. It seems to be working pretty well for IBM.
Re:So, she used up all her creativy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ship is sinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies exist to serve the public. The profit motive is only a guide.
By what law or logic is this? Last I knew, a "company" was simply a group of people who have pooled their resources to accomplish a common goal. That goal could be "cure cancer", "promote world peace", or simply (and commonly) "make money", but there's no mandate I've ever encountered that they must serve the public.
In fact, I can think of many companies that explicitly do not serve the public, or do so only indirectly. Holding companies, for example, exist to just own other companies. Defense companies will often only serve governments, which may or may not serve the public interest. Foreign financial companies are often merely vehicles for relocating money for tax purposes.
Re:Ship is sinking (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't find *most* of Google's ads on their own services to be that annoying. They come in the form of text, mostly, and are significantly more relevant to me than ads from other services. I don't like ads, but if I'm going to "pay" for the free services by putting up with ads, I'd rather they be appropriate than for crap that really annoys me.