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It finally happened. More than a year after putting itself up for sale, 90s-era Internet corpse Yahoo has gone and sold itself to Verizon. The $4.5 billion sale, which was approved by Yahoo shareholders last week, was finalized Tuesday morning, marking the end of an era for the flailing Web portal.
Nearly five years to the day after Marissa Mayer took over as C.E.O., ushering in an era of optimism that began with Shepard Fairey-esque posters of her face emblazoned with the word “HOPE“ spread throughout Yahoo’s Sunnyvale headquarters, Mayer is leaving, the last in a long chain of executives who failed to successfully turn around the company. Tucked away in Verizon’s release about the acquisition on Tuesday was a line about Mayer’s exit. “Given the inherent changes to Marissa Mayer’s role with Yahoo resulting from the closing of the transaction, Mayer has chosen to resign from Yahoo,” the company wrote in its news release. “Verizon wishes Mayer well in her future endeavors.”
Mayer took to Tumblr, the largely failed micro-blogging site she bought for $1.1 billion in 2013 and proceeded to run directly into the ground, to write her own goodbye. “While reaching this moment has certainly been a long road traveled, it marks the end of an era for Yahoo, as well as the beginning of a new chapter — it’s an emotional time for all of us,” she wrote. “Given the inherent changes to my role, I’ll be leaving the company. However, I want all of you to know that I’m brimming with nostalgia, gratitude, and optimism.”
In many ways, Mayer’s tenure was doomed from the start. She was given an impossible challenge—pivoting a company most prominently known for serving as a Web portal in the 90s—and held to unrealistic expectations. A superstar at Google, Mayer was hailed as a symbol of hope for the company—a quasi-celebrity C.E.O. known as much for her engineering ability and attention to detail as for her affinity for Oscar de la Renta ensembles. But no amount of glamour could have fixed what was broken at Yahoo, whose executive suite had become a revolving door for dubious talent, from Carol Bartz—who was unceremoniously fired after two and a half years at the helm—to Scott Thompson, who infamously falsified details of a college degree on his résumé. Mayer was the sixth C.E.O. at Yahoo in five years (including two interim chief executives). Despite the constant executive upheaval at the company, it wasn’t until the end of Thompson’s tenure and the beginning of Mayer’s that investors such as Dan Loeb and hedge funds like Starboard took notice, using activist tactics to force radical changes at the company, including laying off 15 percent of Yahoo’s work force in February 2016. Even then, there was little sense of accountability at the tech company, from Mayer or other top executives, as Yahoo prepared to hang up its “for sale” sign.
Despite a series of questionable management practices—spending $3 billion on acquisitions; wasting money on expensive hires like ad man Henrique de Castro, who was paid $109 million for 15 months of work; and the failure to prevent or adequately respond to two high-profile hacking incidents affecting more than a billion Yahoo user accounts last year—Mayer will walk away from Yahoo with $186 million in Yahoo stock, stock options, and restricted stock units. Investors got a good deal, too: Yahoo stock more than tripled over the past five years, in large part thanks to investments in Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan. For major shareholders like Loeb, who pushed Yahoo to unlock the value in its Asian assets, Mayer’s tenure was ultimately a win.
The hollowing-out of the once-great Silicon Valley company meant less good news for Yahoo employees, close to half of whom lost their jobs after Mayer joined the company. Nor will the company’s share price likely be celebrated by the 2,100 Yahoo employees who will reportedly be laid off now that the Verizon deal has closed. Perhaps the least fortunate are the remaining Yahoo employees who fall under the core Web assets Yahoo is selling to Verizon—its search, e-mail, and content sites. Those employees will be merged with another 90s Internet relic, AOL, under Verizon’s ever-expanding corporate umbrella, in a combined entity with the unfortunately creepy name of Oath.
At a time when Silicon Valley has been forced to publicly grapple with issues of sexism, the decrescendo of Mayer’s tenure is doubly unfortunate; there are so few female leaders in tech, and Mayer was seen by many as a female leader where few exist. It remains unclear what’s next for Mayer; whether she’ll spend some time with her family and stay out of the tech limelight, or perhaps head to a V.C. firm. If she’s up for the task of trying to turn around a tech company again, we understand Uber is in need of some talent.
