Vanity Fair: “Marissa Mayer vs. “Kim Kardashian’s Ass”: What Sunk Yahoo’s Media Ambitions?”

Finally, it seemed Mayer had an answer to the question of whether Yahoo was a tech company or a media company. It was both. We may not be the biggest technology company, but we’re the biggest technology company that understands media, she said at a Bloomberg conference last summer. No one argues with the first part of her statement; it’s the second half that is the subject of debate.

Only months later, however, it is all being reined in. While Yahoo is keeping individual publications dedicated to beauty, style, politics, movies, celebrity, and TV, among others, it is ending its “experiment” in creating smaller individual publications. As Yahoo approaches a potential sale, many fear the pattern of cost-cutting could continue. Yahoo is reverting to its natural form, a former staffer told me, a crap home page for the Midwest. Nelson, who has overseen the downsizing, is trying to maintain her good humor. She recently joked to colleagues that she thought she was being invited to the party, and then she showed up and they handed her a broom. (Nelson declined to address that comment, but told me that 2016 is a year of focus and that Yahoo is doubling down on the core content verticals where the company has always shown strength: news sports, finance and lifestyle.)

Sarah Ellison

Could possibly explain why Yahoo is still so popular in Romania (emphasis mine).