Marissa Mayer to Leave Yahoo Board

Yahoo Inc. has sold its internet business to Verizon Communications Inc, following which the company’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer, will step down from the new holding company’s board.

Yahoo also announced that it will change its name to Altaba, once the deal goes through. The company will keep its stake in Aliababa Group and in Yahoo Japan.  Mayer is expected to remain with Yahoo’s core business, as soon after the Verizon deal was made public, she issued a statement that she would stay with he company-at least in the short term.

Verizon paid $4.8 billion for the acquisition.

Mayer became CEO of Yahoo in 2012 and received a lot of flak for the work place policies that she set. For example, the company did not offer its employees maternity leave.

After giving birth to twins, she only took two weeks off before resuming work, and many thought that this example would pressurise other women in the company, many of whom did not have access to nannies and the like, to do the same.

She also reversed the work from home policy that the employees of the company had enjoyed before she joined.

When Mayer took over, Yahoo’s revenue was on the decline, and the company had no clear growth paths. She was responsible for the company’s investment in Alibaba and tried focusing on mobile, video and social.

But, at the beginning of 2016, the company reported a loss of $4.4 billion.

Mayer’s attempts at turning Yahoo around were not very successful. Her $1.1 billion acquisition of blogging platform Tumblr, failed to give returns. She laid off over 1,700 employees, and failed to reposition the company.

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