[CamperBob2]

Most observers seem to agree that Yahoo's problem is cultural in nature. It's not a Nokia-esque situation, where the company was heavily damaged by competitive forces before Elop even showed up.

A big part -- a necessary part -- of the way Jobs changed the culture at Apple was by bringing in a lot of people who had been loyal to him for years at Next and elsewhere. I can't think of any cases where an outsider has parachuted into a large company, by invitation or otherwise, and turned it around by himself/herself.

Can/will Mayer do that? If so, where will the required team of revolutionaries and revanchists come from? If she doesn't (or can't) raid Google, then where will she get the people she will need?

[nostrademons]

There're lots of good people at Yahoo. I've heard from other Google engineers who do a lot of interviewing that their recent impression of a lot of ex-Yahooers has been "Hire this person NOW. How could the company let someone like this go?"

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if one of Marissa's first moves is to fire all the middle management and then promote a bunch of longtime individual contributors into their place.