梅耶尔着手“改造”雅虎

Yahoo Inc.'s rookie chief executive Marissa Mayer has made one thing clear to employees at the outset of her bid to revive the Internet company: Product comes first.

新上任的雅虎公司(Yahoo Inc.)首席执行长梅耶尔(Marissa Mayer)在着手复兴这家互联网公司之际向员工表明了一点：要把产品放在首位。

Since taking over Yahoo three weeks ago, the former Google Inc. executive has talked with Yahoo's product leaders about how to reverse the declining usage of the company's search and email service, said people with knowledge of the matter.

知情人士说，三周前就任雅虎CEO之后，这位谷歌(Google Inc.)前高管已经与雅虎的产品负责人谈了话，内容是如何扭转雅虎搜索和邮件服务用户数量下降的趋势。

She has also told employees that she wants to rewire Yahoo to develop or acquire Web services that take advantage of new 'platforms' such as social networking, mobile devices, and technology that gives people information about their immediate surroundings, including local businesses.

梅耶尔还告诉雅虎员工，她想要改变雅虎的业务结构，开发或收购能够利用“新平台的网络服务，新平台包括社交网络、移动设备以及为人们提供本地商家等实用信息的技术。

And Ms. Mayer recently ordered Yahoo's stock ticker removed from the home page of the company's internal website, called Backyard, signaling to employees that they should focus on creating better Web services rather than worry about corporate finances.

梅耶尔最近还下令将雅虎的股票报价器从公司内部网站“后院(Backyard)的主页上撤下来。此举向员工释放的信号是，他们应该专注于提供更好的互联网服务，而不是担心公司的财务状况。

'I want you thinking about users,' Ms. Mayer has repeatedly said to Yahoo workers, according to people who have interacted with her.

与梅耶尔打过交道的人说，梅耶尔反复对雅虎员工说，我希望你们心里想着用户。

While it is the early days in Ms. Mayer's tenure, her near-singular emphasis on products and users is a departure from her predecessors. Scott Thompson, who quit Yahoo in May after five months as CEO, wanted the Sunnyvale, Calif., company to expand its e-commerce business and exploit its user data to benefit advertisers.

尽管梅耶尔的任期才刚刚开始，她几乎把全部重点都放在产品和用户上的做法已经与前任大相径庭。汤普森(Scott Thompson)曾致力于扩大电子商务业务，并利用用户数据为广告客户谋利。汤普森仅担任了五个月的CEO就在今年5月辞了职。

And Ross Levinsohn, who temporarily took the helm after Mr. Thompson, tried refocusing Yahoo on increasing ad revenue by striking partnerships with other content sites and unloading some of Yahoo's ad technology.

在汤普森之后担任临时CEO的列文森(Ross Levinsohn)则试图通过与其他内容网站建立合作关系以及卖掉雅虎的一些广告技术，而让雅虎重新专注于增加广告收入。

Ms. Mayer, 37 years old and expecting her first child in October, has told colleagues she won't announce a strategic plan before she finishes reviewing Yahoo's businesses. But her early emphasis on products gives hints about what she might do.

今年37岁的梅耶尔将在今年10月生下她的第一个孩子。她告诉同事，在完成对雅虎业务的评估前，她不打算宣布战略规划。但是人们可以从她早早把重点放在产品上的做法得到一些暗示。

A spokeswoman for Ms. Mayer declined to comment or make the CEO available for an interview.

梅耶尔的一名发言人不予置评，也拒绝安排梅耶尔接受采访。

No matter her strategy, Ms. Mayer has a daunting assignment to turn around a company that in recent years has struggled with flat-lining revenue and a moribund stock price. Google and others have eclipsed the company in online advertising, which accounts for the majority of Yahoo's $5 billion in annual revenue.

无论梅耶尔有怎样的战略，扭转雅虎的颓势都是一个艰巨的任务。最近几年，雅虎一直苦于收入和股价均停滞不前。在在线广告业务方面，谷歌等公司已经超过了雅虎。雅虎的50亿美元年收入中，绝大部分来自在线广告收入。

She also won't have nearly the resources she had at Google to make acquisitions. Google has about 20 times more cash than Yahoo's $2 billion and is valued about 10 times more by investors.

她手中可以用来收购其他公司的资源也远不及她在谷歌时掌握的资源多。雅虎目前有现金20亿美元，谷歌比它约多20倍；此外，投资者对谷歌的估值是对雅虎估值的10倍以上。

Yahoo's share price is up 2.7% since Ms. Mayer's appointment was announced, nearly on pace with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index, but the shares have fallen nearly 30% in the past five years.

自梅耶尔的任命宣布以来，雅虎股价上涨了2.7%，与以科技股为重的纳斯达克综合指数(Nasdaq Composite Index)的整体涨幅接近，但该公司股价过去五年已累计跌了近30%。

Keeping up with the kind of salaries programmers and executives receive at Google and Facebook Inc. FB 0.00% will be a major challenge for Yahoo, which has struggled for years with an exodus of workers.

对多年来一直饱受人才流失之苦的雅虎来说，保持与谷歌和Facebook Inc.的程序员及高管同等水平的工资将是一项重大挑战.

Ms. Mayer may have one potential advantage: time. People familiar with her hiring said Yahoo's board promised her she will have years to repair the company's core advertising business, which investors currently don't place much value on. Much of Yahoo's $20 billion market capitalization is tied to its investments in Asian Internet companies.

梅耶尔或许有一项潜在的优势：时间。了解她受雇过程的人士说，雅虎董事会曾向她承诺，她将有数年时间来改善公司的核心广告业务。目前投资者认为雅虎的广告业务没有什么太大价值。雅虎的200亿美元市值中有很大一部分与其在亚洲互联网公司中的投资有关。

Yahoo Chairman Fred Amoroso couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

记者无法立即联系到雅虎董事长阿莫罗索(Fred Amoroso)置评。

As part of her product push, Ms. Mayer has given employees signals that she wants to revamp the Yahoo Web-search service, given her background as a search executive at Google.

作为她提出的“产品优先战略的一部分，梅耶尔已经向员工释放出信号：凭借她本人曾担任谷歌搜索业务高管的背景，她希望改革雅虎的网络搜索服务。

Ms. Mayer, who was employee number 20 at Google, has also imported aspects of Google's product-centric culture and management practices to Yahoo, which has about 12,500 employees. She has asked to approve all company hires, a practice Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page did for years, said people briefed on the matter.

梅耶尔在谷歌的员工号是20号。她还将谷歌以产品为中心的文化和管理方式部分引入了雅虎。雅虎约有12,500名员工。据了解情况的人士说，她要求公司招的所有人都要获得她的批准。谷歌的联合创始人布林(Sergey Brin)和佩奇(Larry Page)曾这样做过多年。

Ms. Mayer has reached out to current and former Google employees, as well as other Silicon Valley executives, to fill Yahoo's executive ranks, according to these people.

据上述人士说，梅耶尔接触了多位谷歌前员工和现员工，以及其他硅谷高管，以便充实雅虎的高管队伍。

Ms. Mayer also has declared that Yahoo's cafeteria food would be free, matching the practice of other Silicon Valley companies like Google. And she has instituted weekly 'FYI' meetings岸similar to Google's 'TGIF' meetings岸every Friday at Yahoo headquarters, where people can ask her questions and where new hires are announced, among other things.

梅耶尔还宣布，雅虎的餐厅将免费提供食品，谷歌等其他硅谷公司早就如此了。此外，她每周五还在雅虎总部召开FYI会（与谷歌的周五TGIF会议类似）。在会上，员工可以向她提问题，还会介绍刚入职的新人。

Ms. Mayer also is evangelizing some of Google's business practices. For instance, she has stressed the importance of analyzing data on how people use Yahoo's websites and mobile apps and the need to produce such user-behavior data before making decisions on whether to develop a new service.

梅耶尔也在宣扬谷歌的一些商业做法。比如，她一直强调对用户使用雅虎网站和手机应用行为进行数据分析的重要性，还强调在决定是否开发某项新服务之前先要获得此类用户行为数据。