Former Yahoo CEO Levinsohn: Marissa Mayer may have to go

“Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer may have to leave the tech giant soon, according to a former head of the company who left after losing out to Mayer for the job three years ago,” Everett Rosenfeld reports for CNBC.

“Former Yahoo interim CEO Ross Levinsohn suggested that the future of the firm will either see it being sold to another entity, or it will mean Mayer is forced to leave her position—or maybe both,” Rosenfeld reports. “It all depends, he said, on how the company’s stock fares after it spins off its remaining stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.”

“Although he had kind words for Mayer’s energy and expertise, Levinsohn admitted that she had a challenging job,” Rosenfeld reports. “‘One person cannot change Yahoo… and the stock growth, based on most reports, is really keyed to Alibaba,’ he said, adding that ‘it is a really really tough business to go run and grow.'”

“Levinsohn said that at this ‘moment of truth,’ some investors (including Starboard Value’s Jeffrey Smith) and board members may begin to evaluate the extent of Yahoo’s gains under Mayer’s leadership,” Rosenfeld reports. “‘She was given a very long leash to build that company, it’s now almost three years. You can look at the performance, it has not gotten to where a lot of people thought it would get to,’ he said.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: The stupid, shortsighted 10-year deal signed by then Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and then Microsoft CEO Ballmer T. Clown on July 2009 to have Bing handle Yahoo Search hamstrings any Yahoo CEO, including Mayer. Anyone who proposes, much less signs a decade-long deal in the tech business is a damned fool.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]

Related article:
Microsoft and Yahoo ink 10-year search partnership deal – July 29, 2009