Why is Ms Mayer trying to turn a technology company into a media business? To begin with, as has been widely noted, part of Ms Mayer’s challenge in reviving Yahoo is not just attracting new users but keeping them engaged so they keep returning. To use the jargon, this kind of “stickiness” in websites is highly prized by advertisers.
One, and perhaps the most obvious, way of doing this is coming up with a breakthrough product such as, say, Google’s search engine, which became everybody’s go-to tool for navigating the web. They kept returning, and Google kept growing its advertising business. Wisely, Ms Mayer seems have decided against taking on her ex-employer in a fight that Yahoo would probably lose, such is Google’s strength when it comes to search.
And so, she seems to be adopting a different strategy, inspired perhaps by the success of Netflix. Netflix was just a video service, marrying its technological know-how with external content. Lately, however, it’s been producing its own programmes.
