What’s Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO)’s Marissa Mayer’s Huge Mistake?

Marissa Mayer has made one big mistake during all the time she has been running Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), David Kirkpatrick said in an interview with Stephanie Ruhle on Bloomberg.

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Kirkpatrick, the CEO of Techomony, was pointing out what seems to be the main idea of the new book Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo! written by Nicholas Carlson which discusses Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) and its CEO.

“[…] She spent all this money on people like Katie Couric and David Pogue and focusing heavily on the media business – which really didn’t understand – where the ads just haven’t been coming in to justify it, and didn’t put enough emphasis on code-based product improvement – which is what she does understand – and tried to make Yahoo! compete more with traditional media companies and less with tech companies: that seems to have been a big, big mistake,” Kirkpatrick said.

Nonetheless, Kirkpatrick said that being a CEO is a very different job than running a bunch of products at Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) no matter how brilliantly Mayer performed when she was at her former job. Furthermore, he said that he thinks Mayer has done some really smart things at Yahoo! like the improvements for the Yahoo! Weather app, Yahoo! News Update and Yahoo! Mail.

When asked about how Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is still a very valuable technology company when it comes to its share price, Kirkpatrick said that he believes this has more to do with investors believing the company would get back most of its investment in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA).

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), one of the most visited websites in the world in 2014, closed at $50.88 per share on Friday.

David E. Shaw’s D.E. Shaw & Co., L.P. was the biggest institutional investor in Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) by the end of the third quarter. The firm reported owning about 19.57 million shares worth about $797.35 million in the technology company.