Marissa Mayer's M&A Strategy, And The Two Companies She Is Closest To Acquiring(businessinsider.com)
businessinsider.com
Marissa Mayer's M&A Strategy, And The Two Companies She Is Closest To Acquiring
http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayers-ma-strategy-and-the-two-companies-she-is-closest-to-acquiring-2012-11
Who logs onto Yahoo regularly? Not that many, even though lots of people uses Yahoo services as an anonymous visitor (I use Yahoo to check my local TV guide for example).
No identity == no targeted advertising. Why do you think Yahoo is so against Do Not Track? Because non-consensual tracking of web users is all it has when it comes to targeted ads.
Facebook knows who my friends are and what I "like". Google knows what I am searching for. Yahoo knows little or nothing about me.
Online advertising has such ludicrously low yield in terms of click-through that targeted advertising has basically become mandatory, and Yahoo's ad product offers very little value compare to Google or Facebook.
MM needs a way to get users to share their identity with Yahoo, but how? Google knows who I am when I search, because I am also logged onto GMail, Google Docs, Google Reader, and more. Obviously they need a product that people want to log on to...but what? A social network to rival Facebook? If that were possible, everyone would be doing it already. Nice web tools to compete with Google? Possible, but Google has spent years developing a very nicely integrated suite of products -- Yahoo would have it work cut out to catch up and offer users a value proposition they cant refuse. A whole new product altogether? Well that happens all the time in Silicon Valley where the bright ideas happen, and Yahoo can simply join the queue when it comes to investing and buying out such companies.
The simple fact is Yahoo is a good company, but being good is not enough -- you need to be remarkable. Look at all the "good" companies that have disappeared over the years since the first Tech Bubble - and it is really not that hard to imagine Yahoo going the way of MySpace and a whole bunch of others...