LONDON: Marissa Mayer’s two-year tenure as Yahoo chief executive officer bring profit for Yahoo including a $1.1 billion Tumbler buyout, the $300 million Flurry acquisition and over 40 more in under two years.
Mayer has also changed the goal of Yahoo, which didn’t have a clear one before she joined. The company is now focused on mobile and social media, removing other parts of the business that don’t align with the new goal.
Yahoo Weather, Sports, Games and other mobile apps have all been updated to top review scores, showing the new investment in mobile. The mobile team has grown from 50 to 500 employees, mostly due to the acquisitions of talent.
The Sunnyvale, California-based technology company hosted its first developer conference with a large focus on a mobile developer suite. The new suite offers various analytical tools from its acquisition of Flurry, alongside integration of Yahoo ads.
“If we think we can help developers make apps better, everyone wins,” Mayer said at the conference.
Considering Flurry can view over 1.6 billion smartphones and offers information on user movement inside an application, it trumps both Google and Facebook’s own analytics services.
In the past two years, Mayer has also made sure mobile advertising and search works. Before joining, Yahoo simply shrunk its ads down to scale, something that’s unacceptable in Mayer’s eyes if Yahoo wants to compete with Google.
Even with all of this investment in mobile, Yahoo is still running at a $400 million operating loss without the 15 percent share in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan, meaning its Western presence is still low compared to rivals.
The acquisition of Tumbler has done naught to push revenues higher considering the micro blogging services’ lacklustre advertising incentives for bloggers.
Mayer has had two years to reinvent Yahoo’s wheel. Now she needs to sell that wheel to investors, advertisers and most importantly, consumers.
