The New York Times Magazine ran an insightful article on Yahoo's downfall by Nicholas Carlson. Suffice it to say that Yahoo lost ground in a big way to the big four - Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook. Mayer, who cut her teeth at Google inherited a company with a $37 billion stake in Alibaba, but if you sold off that position, what was left was negative $4 billion ! Mayer, avid reader of Town & Country magazine and used to wearing Oscar de la Renta couture was a poor match for Yahoo, a middle-America brand. She lacked instincts of a media executive. Anna Wintour, Vogue editor in chief, was appalled at Mayer's suggestion they join forces with Yahoo's site for women, Shine. Wintour was making money focused on a narrow affluent audience, not 500 million monthly page views.
Funniest anecdote - at major advertising event in France, Martin Sorrell, media mogul (WPP), asked Mayer on stage why she didn't return his phone calls.
