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Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer remembers her time at the tech company and opens up about some regrets.
During Mayer’s tenure at Yahoo, the company bought microblogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion in 2013 but feels it should have bought Netflix or Hulu instead.
“We looked at a transformational acquisition, and we bought Tumblr,” said Meyer. Brew tech in an interview. “At the same time, we were also considering whether ironically we could have bought Hulu or Netflix. I think Netflix was $4 billion and Hulu at the time was $1.3 billion. And either of those, with 20/20 hindsight, would have be a better acquisition.”
In 2016, Yahoo devalued the blogging platform by $230 million. By 2019, after Verizon acquired Yahoo, the company sold Tumblr for much less than it paid for it.
Although Yahoo didn’t buy either streaming service, it did take a shot at streaming by using Yahoo Screen to create shows like Sin City Saints And another space Plus picking up the sixth season of the canceled NBC sitcom Community.
Mayer also said that the other two companies regretted that as CEO of Yahoo she had appointed Henrique de Castro as chief operating officer in place of Lisa Utzschneider and not made the “tax-exempt Alibaba pop-up to separate the company’s assets”.
She added, “If we had done that, it would have saved our shareholders $10 billion or made them that money, whichever way you look at it, on the taxes that were paid.” And second, it would have allowed Yahoo to continue as an independent company, and it would have potentially been more successful.
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