Yahoo is making more money under CEO Marissa Mayer, despite unexpected drop in revenue

By Michael Liedtke - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 at 5:06 PM - 0 Comments

SAN FRANCISCO – Yahoo is making more money under CEO Marissa Mayer, even as the Internet company struggles to sell more of the ads that bring in most of its revenue.

The latest signs of earnings progress came Tuesday with the release of Yahoo’s first-quarter earnings report.

The numbers also show further signs of decay in Yahoo’s sales of display ads. On the plus side, Yahoo’s ad revenue tied to search results rose.

Investors seemed more worried about the downturn in Yahoo’s display advertising than the surge in the company’s earnings. Yahoo’s stock sank more than 3 per cent after the results came out.

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Girls season finale: The Greek chorus speaks, but Hannah’s hubris goes unpunished

By Jessica Allen - Monday, March 18, 2013 at 7:17 AM - 0 Comments

He said, she said is a discourse on the second season of Girls from two points of view. (Find previous conversations here.)

Episode summary: In the season finale, Hannah finds herself unable to meet her ebook deadline and reaches out to her father for help. But he suspects she’s up to her old shenanigans and being manipulative. Marnie confronts Charlie about being in love with him and Charlie admits that he still loves her.  Ray accepts a promotion to manage a new location of the Grumpy Cafe to try and impress Shosh. But it’s not enough and Shosh breaks up with Ray. Hannah, who is in the middle of an OCD spell, calls Adam, who is trashing the boat he is building in the middle of his apartment. He races to her apartment in the middle of the night, shirtless. 

She said: Well, if we can start with the end first, I feel like a lot of people are going to have trouble with the fact that Adam literally comes to rescue Hannah. I wonder if there will be people who suggest that they just lost all sorts of credibility by suggesting that in the end, all we want is to be rescued. But I have to admit, I did not take that scene as a man rescuing a woman. For me, it was an intimiate scene of friendship, and I didn’t find it to be sexualized. He’s odd. She’s odd. And their reunion had nothing to do with gender. Or maybe it did. Maybe I’m so brainwashed by the establishment that I can’t even see it. You know the recent cover story of Maclean’s about the CEO of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, and her new book? I was talking with the story’s writer and I said something like, ‘I have never in my life even aspired to be the CEO of a company.’ And she said that was the very premise of Sandberg’s book: I’ve been brainwashed to think that it’s not even a possibility for me, as a woman. And at first I thought, Yeah, maybe. But after considering the idea, well, no, I don’t think so. And the most important people in my life, they don’t aspire to be the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company either. I don’t know those people, and I’m not sure that I’d want to. I’m really getting off topic here.

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Yahoo finally issues statement on work-from-home controversy

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, February 27, 2013 at 9:36 AM - 0 Comments

Yahoo issued a statement Tuesday afternoon after five days of controversy sparked by a new policy saying that employees were no longer allowed to work from home.

In a memo leaked to tech blog All Things D, on Friday, Feb. 22, the company claimed “speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,” and “We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.”

The memo about the new rules, which will take effect in June, irked many employees who pointed out that CEO Marissa Mayer worked from home in the days after her son was born. They also argued that the new rules won’t hurt Mayer herself: she had the means to install a nursery in her office.

After The New York Times ran a front-page story about the controversy, Yahoo finally responded with a comment. “This isn’t a broad industry view on working from home,” the statement said. “This is about what is right for Yahoo right now.”

Marissa Mayer finds her place

By Anne Kingston - Thursday, December 6, 2012 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Adam Tinworth/flickr/cp

When Yahoo! Inc. named Marissa Mayer as president and CEO in July 2012, it was a very big deal, corporately speaking. Yahoo! poaching the 37-year-old Google executive from its archrival was a major coup; in a press release, the company crowed that Mayer had helped launch “more than 100 features and products including image, book, and product search; toolbar; iGoogle; Google News; and Gmail—creating much of the look and feel of the Google user experience.” Possessed of a smart and sunny demeanour, Mayer was once a visible public face of the search-engine behemoth, famously interviewing Lady Gaga for a “Google goes Gaga” YouTube video in 2011. Much was riding on her ability to turn around the foundering $5-billion tech giant. News of her appointment, which makes her the youngest Fortune 500 company CEO, boded well: Yahoo! stock price rose 2.7 per cent.

Yet what occupied headlines was not Mayer’s stellar professional accomplishments, but her gynecological ones. When she was appointed, the CEO was six months pregnant with her first child (with husband Zack Bogue, a lawyer). When she returned to the executive suite weeks after delivering son Macallister, an inevitable firestorm of debate ensued—one that highlighted the double standard that still applies to mothers, but not fathers, in the top echelons of business. Continue…

Newsmakers of the week

By Charlie Gillis and Scaachi Koul - Sunday, October 7, 2012 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Aram Boghosian

The outsider

All eyes at this year’s Academy Awards will be on Seth MacFarlane, named this week as host of the extravaganza in what can only be described as an off-the-chart choice. MacFarlane is best known as the brains behind the raunchy animated satire Family Guy—a hit among college-aged males and not exactly a brand of humour associated with the air-kissed pomp of Oscar night. Critics accused the Academy of pandering to younger viewers. But it turns out MacFarlane is an accomplished singer and a sought-after talk-show guest. He’s also showing a sense of occasion. “The challenge will be to keep it funny, keep it lively and stay true to what it is I do,” he said, “but at the same time adapt to the tone of this event.”

Speaking from experience

Stephen Barton, a survivor of last summer’s mass shooting at a movie theatre in Aurora, Colo., is starring in a compelling new ad asking both presidential candidates to come up with a plan for gun control. In it, Barton sits in an empty theatre and talks about surviving gunshots to the face and neck. “Forty-eight thousand Americans won’t be so lucky,” he continues, “because they’ll be murdered with guns in the next president’s term.” The ad is airing on local television in Colorado, and Washington, D.C., and on national cable as part of a campaign funded by United Against Illegal Guns Support Fund founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The group appears to be getting traction: more than 250,000 have signed its petition for legislative action.

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Good news, bad news: July 12-19, 2012

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 19, 2012 at 2:10 PM - 0 Comments

Good news

Fredrik Von Erichsen/AFP/Getty Images

The Greatest, indeed

The centennial Calgary Stampede, blessed with sunny weather for most of its 10-day duration, set a new attendance record with an estimated 1,409,371 visitors. (The previous mark of 1,262,518 was established in 2006.) The “Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth” continued to attract criticism after a spill in the chuckwagon race killed three horses, but veterinary pathologists reported that the lead horse in the devastated team had a heart aneurysm and could have died anytime. New fitness standards for horses, introduced last year, will be reviewed. But as confirmed by the huge crowds, one freak accident is hardly enough to tarnish the entire show.

Google this

Yahoo!’s decision to hire as CEO Marissa Mayer, 37, a soon-to-be mother, is a refreshing step forward for male-dominated Silicon Valley. The former Google executive publicly revealed she was pregnant just a few hours after her appointment. Equality in the workplace has long been a goal, but the reality is many women still lag behind men when it comes to pay, promotions and career advancement opportunities. Yahoo! should be applauded for its willingness to hire Mayer based on her talents, not her immediate availability.

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