While Berkshire Hathaway owns some companies outright like Burlington Northern-Santa Fe railroad and GEICO, even those are for the most part left in the hands of managers who came with the businesses. It’s simply beyond Mayer’s power because no matter how much money she has, Google and Facebook will always have more. That’s because that trajectory is determined more by Google and Facebook and by changes in the ad market than by anything Yahoo can do. Lots of acqui-hires (buying tech companies for their people) and big acquisitions like Tumblr have not significantly changed the company’s downward trajectory. Mayer seems to be trying to buy her way ahead of the next technology wave, but having been at this game for a couple of years so far, it isn’t going well. The only other possible course for Yahoo, in my view, is to turn the company into a Silicon Valley version of Berkshire Hathaway. One is to wind things down and return Yahoo’s value to shareholders in the most efficient fashion, selling divisions, buying back shares, and issuing dividends until finally turning out the lights and going home. In practical terms there are only two logical courses of action for Mayer and Yahoo. Even if she fires everyone, Yahoo still has a funny smell. She has the temperament for it but the rest of Yahoo does not. It’s not that Mayer isn’t super-smart, it’s that the job she is attempting to do may be impossible. There is no reason to believe that more money is the answer.
Yahoo would have to do what it has been trying to do ever since Tim Koogle left as CEO in 2003 and regain its mojo. Those ships have, for the most part, already sailed and can never be caught. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, thinking like Type A CEOs nearly always seem to think, wants to take some of the billions reaped from the Alibaba IPO and dramatically remake her company to compete again with Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and even Apple. But - if it will - Yahoo could invest its way to even greater success. Having covered Yahoo continuously since its founding 20 years ago it is clear Y! has little chance of managing its way out of this latest of many crises despite all the associated cash.
Yahoo’s Wall Street honeymoon, if there ever was one, is over, leaving the company trying almost anything it can to avoid sliding into oblivion. Alibaba’s IPO has come and gone and with it Yahoo has lost the role of Alibaba proxy and its shares have begun to slide.
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