Marissa Mayer Brings Free Food to Yahoo, Eyes Acquisitions [REPORT]

How is new CEO Marissa Mayer going to revitalize Yahoo? By making it more like Google, the company she just left.

According to AllThingsD‘s Kara Swisher, Mayer has instituted a few changes already at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, CA, headquarters. Among them: establishing a weekly all-hands meeting on Friday afternoons, and making all the food in its URLs Cafe, which previously priced egg white muffin sandwiches at $3.65 and teriyaki chicken paninis at $5.31, free.

Of course, it’s easy to say that all of this has been borrowed directly from Google, but these kinds of offerings have become standard at many Silicon Valley offices the fact that Yahoo has, until now, lacked them has likely been a sore point for some of its engineers. Both Facebook and Twitter, for instance, serve up free snacks and daily catered meals to employees.

They’re small changes, yes, but they’re likely to improve the morale of a company whose public image and internal image has deteriorated over the last seven years.

In addition to the new meeting and food policy, Swisher reports that Mayer is also planning “major changes” to workspaces “to make [them] more collaborative and cool,” and improving the swag offered in its stores. She’s also pushing to improve Yahoo’s core products, including e-mail, Flickr and search.

Several of Swisher’s sources said that “big splash tech or product deals… perhaps via an acquisition” may be announced “in the days ahead.”

Mayer’s Compensation at Yahoo Could Top $50 Million

Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer will take home a base salary of $1 million.

Yahoo filed its employment offer for the its new CEO and expectant mother with the SEC on Thursday.

While Mayer’s base salary will start at $1 million a year in 2012, the former Googler can earn a maximum of 400% of that salary in bonuses in 2012, assuming she exceeds targeted milestones.

In addition to her base pay, Mayer is also walking away with $12 million in Yahoo stock and an additional $14 million for the stock she was unable to vest at Google.

Moreover, the letter states that Yahoo will offer Mayer a big incentive for staying on for five years: $30 million in stock, $15 million of which will be fully vested at that time.

SEE ALSO: Yahoo Earnings Call Leaves Many Questions Unanswered

All-in-all, Mayer’s total pay package, including stock options, has the potential to be be nearly $60 million.

Yahoo Earnings Call Leaves Many Questions Unanswered

Neither Yahoo’s new CEO, Marissa Mayer, nor Ross Levinsohn, the interim CEO she just replaced, were on the line for Yahoo’s second quarter earnings call Tuesday evening and what lies ahead for the two executives’ plans remains largely unknown.

Here’s what we learned from Chief Financial Officer Tim Morse, who led the call:

The slight uptick in display ad revenue for the quarter came from the Americas. Display ad revenue from Europe, Middle East and Africa declined 7% due to “global economic conditions.”

 

Search was down 17%. How come? Osama Bin Laden’s death last summer caused a temporary search spike, Morse said. (I find it hard to believe that it could be responsible for such a large chunk, don’t you?)

Yahoo spent $88 million on severance packages for the 2,000 employees Levinsohn laid off during the quarter. The company spent another $23 million on facilities shutdowns and $18 million on assets write-downs.

 

The company now has around 14,000 employees.

 

Alibaba’s buyback from Yahoo is expected to close ahead of schedule.

 

Mobile revenue is up 50%. From what base? We don’t know.
And here’s what else we don’t know:

What will happen to Levinsohn who, until Tuesday, was Yahoo’s interim CEO?

 

Who will take over while Mayer, who is six months pregnant, is on maternity leave?

Third-quarter guidance. Morse said it hasn’t been discussed with Mayer yet. Also said he doesn’t know if she’ll speak to analysts before the next earnings release.

 

SEE ALSO: Marissa Mayer, New Yahoo CEO, Is Pregnant

 

The company’s direction. “We’re just gonna have to take a little bit of time to work through… direction. It’s safe to say we need to be really good at certain technologies and we need to be great at content. Both of those are imperative to our success,” Morse said.

 

The details of the new partnership with Facebook. Morse would only say, “It will be a close collaboration… [We'll] expand our distribution arrangements and settle all our oustanding claims.”

In Face of Big Changes, Yahoo’s Revenues Remain Flat

Since Yahoo reported first-quarter earnings, the company has had two CEOs, dealt with an uruly board, and settled complicated transactions with both Alibaba and Facebook. Through the large part of that timeframe, Yahoo’s revenues and profits remained relatively flat, the company reported Tuesday.

Net revenue was $1.081 billion for the quarter ending June 30, down slightly from $1.076 billion in the same period a year ago. Net income was $226.6 million, down from $237 million in Q2 2011.

Revenue from display advertising amounted to $534.9 million, up from $523.5 million. Search and revenue marked “other” both declined, down to $460.9 million and $221.9 million respectively.

SEE ALSO: Marissa Mayer, New Yahoo CEO, Is Pregnant

Yahoo hosted a conference call at 5 p.m. ET on Tuesday. New CEO Marissa Mayer, who began work at Yahoo on Tuesday, was not on the call. Nevertheless, she’s likely to be the focus.

Marissa Mayer, New Yahoo CEO, Is Pregnant

Marissa Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo as of Monday, is pregnant.

After announcing she would be leaving Google after 13 years, the 37-year-old’s whirlwind day contiued as she told Fortune she was expecting a baby boy Oct. 7.

“He’s super-active,” Mayer said. “He moves around a lot. My doctor says that he takes after his parents.”

While this may seem like an overwhelming day for Mayer, she’s known about her pregnancy since January.

When the Yahoo recruiter first contacted Mayer June 18, she was well-aware that she would soon be a new mother. She told Yahoo’s board about her pregnancy in late June.

According to All Things D, Mayer’s pregnancy was not an issue to the company’s board. Yahoo’s decision reflects a change in a business environment once inhospitable to mothers and women expecting children.

“It was not part of the consideration,” said an anonymous person familiar with the situation. “Like every other professional woman, she has to weigh all the factors in doing her job and having a family.”

SEE ALSO: Marissa Mayer and Yahoo: Silicon Valley’s New Odd Couple?

Mayer also expressed that she was pleased the Yahoo board was not concerned, telling Fortune their actions “showed their evolved thinking.”

And as far as maternity leave goes, don’t expect Mayer to be out of the office for long. The new CEO plans to return to the office after a few short weeks and will be working throughout her time off. Yahoo’s scheduled September board meeting will be in Sunnyvale, Calif., rather than New York, to accomodate for the expecting mother-to-be.

Marissa Mayer and Yahoo: Silicon Valley’s New Odd Couple?

While Marissa Mayer’s decision to leave Google for Yahoo on Monday appeared to take the former by surprise, perhaps it shouldn’t have. Back in 2009, Google execs saw Mayer as a flight risk. As a New York Times article detailed at the time, Mayer’s then-boss, Jonathan Rosenberg, tracked her down on vacation in Africa to ask if she was leaving.

She wasn’t, and went out of her way to tell Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin that she had no plans to leave. The fact that the two were worried is a good indication of Mayer’s standing there.

Mayer had not only been at the company a very long time by Silicon Valley standards — she joined in 1999 as employee number 20 — but she was also a high-profile female executive with a reputation for getting things done and imbuing the company with a keen sense of style.

Mayer’s influence was felt in many ways at the company, not least of which is the iconic spartan look of its homepage. That white space-heavy look was a reflection of Mayer’s tastes, which ran to the glass artwork of Dale Chihuly (whose opulent ceiling display in her San Francisco penthouse raised eyebrows in 2011) to the Marimekko prints that once hung in her childhood home in Wausau, Wis.

 SEE ALSO: Marissa Mayer Is Yahoo’s New CEO

In profiles of Mayer, she comes across as a kindred spirit to Apple’s Steve Jobs in both her attention to detail and her allegiance to a design aesthetic. In one anecdote, Mayer asked her team to test 41 gradiations of blue to see which one consumers preferred best. The Jobs comparison also applies in the negative as well — Mayer’s sense of entitlement led her to cause a traffic jam in San Francisco during the rain at rush hour to install her Chihuly artwork.

Mayer’s perfectionism will be tested at Yahoo, which is known more these days for its dwindling market share and its succession of failed chief executives than for a commitment to anything beyond stemming its decline. However, Mayer, whose net worth has been estimated in the $300 million range, may be seeking a chance to prove herself and emerge from Brin and Page’s shadow.

Dubbed “The Google Princess” by Gawker for her pull-out-all-the-stops 2009 wedding, Mayer clearly doesn’t shun the limelight.

Yet Mayer is no grinning figurehead, but a seasoned executive. As she explained in a 2008 interview with Fast Company, Mayer had embraced the chaos of management. At one point, as Mayer recalled, “I had a flow chart on my wall with, like, 127 people to notify and 37 possible launch dates.”

Dealing with an overabundance of responsibility is one thing and playing the type of office politics that appear to be needed at Yahoo is another, though. Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s former CEO, characterized that company’s board of directors as incompetent and passive-aggressive.

Bartz recalled that then-chairman Roy Bostock read from a script as he fired her over the phone. In Bartz’s view, the board never recovered from its decision to turn down Microsoft’s $40 billion acquisition bid in 2008.

Marissa Mayer Is Yahoo’s New CEO

Marissa Mayer, a 13-year veteran of Google, is Yahoo’s new CEO, the company announced on Monday.

Mayer’s appointment comes after a revolving door of chief executives at the company including, most recently, Scott Thompson, who stepped down in May after a scandal involving his doctored resume.

Mayer, 37, was employee number 20 at Google and was a crucial asset to the search giant, introducing more than 100 features and products to the site during her tenure. In October 2010, Mayer, who held the title VP of Search Product, began overseeing location and local services at the company.

An engineer by trade, Mayer was among the top echelon at Google with access to company co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

SEE ALSO: Yahoo Voices Hacked: 450,000 Passwords Posted Online

For Yahoo, the appointment is another shot at reinvention after a slew of would-be turnaround experts including Carol Bartz and Thompson, who’s short tenure was marked by a proxy war with Dan Loeb, an activist investor.

Yahoo Voices Hacked: 450,000 Passwords Posted Online

If you’re a Yahoo Voices user, it’s time to change your password.

Security for the service appears to have been compromised early Thursday morning. A list titled “Owned and Exposed” which is “brought to you by the D33Ds Company” was posted online revealing a number of details for the service including all of the email addresses and passwords for Yahoo Voices’ 450,000 users.

The site hosting the information is intermittently down; however, we were able to open the document and verify that it does in fact contain user emails and password data.

At the end of the document the group remarks that it posted the information to be a “Wake-up call” rather than a threat.

“We hope that the parties responsible for managing the security of this subdomain will take this as a wake-up call, and not as a threat,” the document says. “There have been many security holes exploited in webservers belonging to Yahoo! Inc. that have caused far greater damage than our disclosure.

SEE ALSO: Yahoo Users Consume More Energy Than Gmail Users [INFOGRAPHIC]

“Please do not take them lightly. The subdomain and vulnerable parameters have not been posted to avoid further damage.”

The group also included this quote from Jean Vanier in its closing remarks: “Growth begins when we begin to accept our own weakness.”

Yahoo Users Consume More Energy Than Gmail Users [INFOGRAPHIC]

 Yahoo Mail-subscribing-households use 11% more electricity per year than Gmail households, a recent study by Opower found. That adds up to nearly a whole extra month of electricity, about an extra $110 per year.

“It’s as if, relative to the average Yahoo household, the average Gmailer is strictly hang-drying their laundry, forgoing high-definition TV, and hand-washing their dishes with cold water for a year,” Opower writes in its’ blog.

So what makes for this drastic disparity in energy usage? Opower a research company that unpacks and analyzes energy data to present to everyday consumers in an actionable way found that the problem is one of “correlation not causation.” Meaning that the email domains aren’t driving the issue of energy usage. Instead, discrepancies are related to the core demographics of each site’s users.

“Yahoo subscribers tend to live in suburbs, be in longterm relationships, have a family,” says Barry Fischer, a head writer and a research for Opower. “Those types of lifestyle characteristics carry with them greater energy needs compared to Gmail household. [Gmailers] are found more in urban areas, are younger and are single.”

Ultimately, Opower found that even though Yahoo users live in larger residences than Gmail users, Yahoo subscribers need more electricity per square foot than Gmail users.

Though Opower only analyzed 2011 data, Fischer says he believes similar patterns of higher Yahoo energy usage would have been found in previous years.

But Yahoo users can’t simply cut down on electricity charges now by signing up for a Gmail account. It’s all about lifestyle adjustments to cut back on overall energy costs, Opower says.

See more about the differences in Yahoo and Gmail users’ energy spending in the infographics below. Tell us how you cut down on energy costs in your home in the comments: