[billsossoon]

While the article does discuss activist shareholders, it's really a brutal indictment against Mayer's leadership in general. It left me wondering if Mayer stood up the author on a lunch date.

Regardless of Yahoo's recent results, Mayer seems to have alienated many people and made decisions that increasingly seem unlikely to achieve the long-term goals. Really, what has been accomplished?

- She went all-in on playing the app lottery by developing new apps in-house, and I don't think any of Yahoo apps have been real winners. However, she bolstered the app engineering force, which may pay off down the road as the mobile software landscape continues to evolve.

- She bought up a bunch of expensive start-ups seemingly at random. I figured these purchases might make sense in retrospect, when some grand design is revealed, but I'm still waiting.

- She made a big bet on online media that doesn't align with what people want to watch.

Google can afford to throw spaghetti against the wall because Google's search revenue is footing the bill. Yahoo seemingly adopted the same strategy in an attempt to identify its core business.