Sounds really smart to me: get tons of feedback on a critical branding decision, while having a fun, unique, and potentially buzz-building little experiment that could drive users to your home page daily. Perhaps most importantly, it requires no commitment on Yahoo's part, considering the bad PR Microsoft and eBay both recently experienced when announcing their new logos.
She is crazy smart, likely a genius in her field. I just think this move to Yahoo is a long shot, motivated by Hubris more than anything and I still don't think it will bode well for her. I hope I'm wrong, but there are some things all the brains in the world can't fix.
Not sure if I'm a fan of making decisions like this via a/b testing, but we'll see how it turn out.
http://lurnq.com/lesson/Decoding-Marissa-Mayer/section/Maris...