[curiousgal]

You didn't address OP's point:

>If her net contribution to Yahoo as a business was 0, it seems pretty unreasonably to assert that NOBODY could have made any better acquisitions (e.g. buy Instagram, not tumbler), or strategic initiatives (why focus on search?).

[pooper]

I can't answer for anyone else but I can say with pretty good confidence that Yahoo! would not exist today if they put me in charge. I would fling poop left and right the moment I discovered the back door. I wouldn't have gave two poops about shareholder value. I am sure "they" would have found something sketchy about my past life that is worthy of at least ten life sentences and I would be sent away for good.

I was already a little skeptical by the time Y! bought tumblr but I think the effort was there. I saw bringing in Katie Couric and David Pogue as a way to ease older people to watching "live TV" on Y!. I still don't think there was any fault with the vision. It might just be that the execution was a few years too early or bit too ambitious? I mean getting younger audiences to watch the news is not easy and getting majority of the "old" people to go from lean back to lean forward isn't easy either. It feels like a gamble and I still believe it succeeded in a parallel universe.

[rhaps0dy]

>I would fling poop left and right

Username checks out :)

[danieltillett]

I don't think on average anyone else would have made better acquisitions. Sure in hindsight we can say other acquisitions would have been better, but I don't think anyone else hireable would have done better than MM other than through chance.

Having said this I think Zuckerberg is massively undervalued as a CEO.