Yahoo, the once-vaunted internet giant, is in shambles. Its revenue is in decline. Its shareholders are crying foul. Its prized public faces are scrambling for an exit, and the company has laid off 15 percent of its workforce. Its core business—internet search and advertising—is negatively valued. Looming over all of this is a prospective sale of the company’s core assets, bids for which have reportedly reached more than $5 billion.
That potential sale is in stark contrast to the four years CEO Marissa Mayer led Yahoo through an acquisition binge, snapping up 53 companies for a total of $2.3 billion, according to a company spokesperson. (Other estimates put that number closer to $2.8 billion.)
As CEO, Mayer has had the unpleasant honor of leading a company that seemed destined to fail, but that wasn’t always the case. When she took over in mid-2012, employees were so enthusiastic about her arrival that one even photoshopped her face on Obama-style “hope” posters and hung them up around the company’s headquarters. Mayer did her best to live up to lofty expectations. She deployed quick fixes to solve Yahoo’s morale problems, including expanding parental leave and hiring high-profile celebrities to run the company’s media division.