Yahoo is in rough shape. Like many classic web 1.0 brands, it never really made a clear transition to the modern consumer internet. For years now no one -- either in or outside Yahoo -- seems to know what Yahoo is (or should be). It's had a revolving door of CEOs, and its stock price hasn't really moved since the crash of 08. At best, they're treading water. But there's clearly a huge opportunity.

Cue Yahoo's freshest CEO (in every sense of the word): Marissa Mayer, the industry rock star credited with Google's early laser-focus on product, clarity, and design. And focus should probably top of the list of things Yahoo needs most right now. Win.

But I think the burning question is: can Marissa save Yahoo? Really, can anyone save Yahoo?

The first thing Marissa needs to address the identity crisis Yahoo! has developed via its execu-volving-door. Is it a media company? Is it a tech company? It's probably a tech media company, but "Science/Art/Scale" (ASS?), as Bartz put it, is not the answer. It may be a rallying cry for salespeople, but it's not a ray of light to consumers or marketers. Yahoo! has tremendous brand equity (in spite of its famous failures). I'd like to see them champion multi-screen UI/UX. They were headed down this path for a while, but lost their way. If they can be the place where people find/discover/share content again, they stand a fighting chance.

Otherwise, they become an ADD-addled media aggregation business, pressured by "the street" to just sell more inventory (and will need to make distracting long-term non-strategic acquisitions just to keep growing).

I think Paul Graham did a good job of describing how big tech companies enter a death spiral: once the good engineers leave it's almost impossible to replace them, since anyone good has the option to join any number of big or small tech companies with momentum and doesn't want to be associated with a company in decline. That inability to bring in talent only further accelerates decline, which is pretty much where Yahoo has been for the past few years.

Turning that around is tough and almost impossible to do since it requires breaking that cycle and convincing talented people who can fix things that Yahoo is fixable. Marissa Mayer is probably one of the few people who could convince great people to work at Yahoo (Marc Andreesen is another).

The problem with most of the big tech companies today is the fact that their leaders are older (and supposedly wiser). However, the people that will use these products will most likely be younger. Marissa Mayer is only 37 and is currently the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company. This alone gives Yahoo a real fighting chance because Mayer is different & unique unlike all of the other cookie cutter CEOs.

Also, she has worked at Google for years, so she is quite familiar Yahoo's competition.

Every bit of Mayer's hiring is good for Yahoo & I bet that Mayer can save Yahoo & bring it back into the spotlight.

Funny. A few months ago I would've said that Google and Yahoo don't compete anymore, but now that Google is buying media companies and building media consumption devices, I actually have to re-think that.

Marissa has shown previously she had amazing skills for designing products and integrate them pretty smoothly in Google's strategy.

Let's try to figure out what could be the crazy theory (there's always one!).

Marissa becomes Yahoo's new CEO (It already sounds crazy but...). She focuses on the "product" and makes it really better, more user centric and... Google compliant. Google and Yahoo start building strong partnerships thanks to the unique connections between both top management. Google swallow Yahoo thanks to Marissa who made of Yahoo the perfect missing part of Google Strategy...

Does it really make no sense at all?

So YES, she can save Yahoo in one way or another...
(Sorry, I forgot this last one in the previous post :-))