Marissa Mayer, the former CEO of Yahoo, recently opened up about her regrets while leading the tech giant. In particular, she expressed regret over not buying Netflix or Hulu instead of Tumblr when Yahoo had the opportunity to do so.
Mayer believes that acquiring either streaming service would have been a better move for Yahoo than purchasing Tumblr in 2013 for 1 billion dollars. She said “I wish we’d bought Netflix or Hulu…it would have been a better acquisition” and added that it was an example of missing out on an important trend in media consumption at the time.
Yahoo ended up selling Tumblr to Automattic Inc., owner of WordPress, three years later at a loss due to its inability to monetize users effectively and lackluster user growth since its purchase by Mayer’s team five years prior. The sale was seen as one more misstep during her tenure as CEO, which ultimately led to her departure from Yahoo in 2017 after four tumultuous years with declining stock prices and decreased market share against competitors, such as Google and Facebook, who were dominating digital advertising revenue streams at this period.
Read more at Deadline
