Hasta La Gadget!

It’s time for a change at Yahoo, and their appointing of former Google top brass Marissa Mayer makes it clear that they’re ready to cut a few heads to re-invigorate the company as well. As Mayer can claim having a major part in quite a few of Google’s big-name brands on the web over the past 10+ years, Yahoo is certainly interested in her making big decisions with their assets as well as with their not-so-healthy or otherwise bleeding projects. With a vast knowledge of not only how the company works, but a sense of what wont work on the web in the future as well.

Mayer had been up until this week a part of Google for many years, starting as an engineer and working her way up to the head of several departments in the past several years. She oversaw the changing of Gmail and the main search user interfaces for the modern age of Google, and was up until recently part of the Google inner circle working with its top heads. It was only very recently that Mayer must have found herself out of favor with Google – back in 2011 she spoke at the Computer History Museum on why she joined the team originally:

Having been added to the Wal-Mart board of appointees just this April, Mayer certainly got a taste of what it means to have a seat at a public company. Her combined knowledge from both her high rank at Google and her relatively short time at Wal-Mart have set her up for a Yahoo win in the very near future. As those responsible for this hire at Yahoo certainly understand a turnaround of Yahoo’s fortunes will require Mayer to act swiftly in regards not only to reinvigorating the support the web-based company has in its users, but in cutting programs left and right as well.

Check out the timeline below to get further insight on how Marissa Mayer will be changing Yahoo in her new seat as CEO.

Mayer brings Google’s “cool” to Yahoo is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Yahoo’s new CEO, ex-Googler Marissa Mayer, faces no shortages of challenges turning the struggling behemoth around, but there are some key places that require some frantic surgery. With Yahoo‘s share price still slumping, Mayer’s first day on the job will be spent triaging the numerous weak points and figuring out how she can bring first stability and then a turnaround to the ravaged firm. But which exactly are those main areas that need attention?

Flickr

Yahoo has arguably been sitting on a goldmine of user engagement, but – beyond the frustrating forced-switch to using Yahoo credentials to log in – has made little use of photo sharing site Flickrf. That’s much to the chagrin of those with galleries on the site, who had been hoping for investment and more after Yahoo spent somewhere in the region of $35m for it.

Problem is, from being the automatic choice for photo sharing, Flickr now faces a raft of rivals that each make it far easier to create personal and public galleries online. Auto-upload features as we’ve seen in iOS with Camera Roll, and as have been introduced with Google+ and Facebook apps for mobile, have caught wind with the rise in smartphone photography; Flickr’s own usage stats show the most popular cameras are those on the iPhone 4 and 4S.

Mayer’s challenge here is to increase Flickr’s footprint in mobile without frustrating the other sizable group in the user stats: those with DSLRs from Canon, Nikon and others.

The Portal

Take a look at Yahoo’s homepage. It’s hardly the paragon of pared-back simplicity that Google.com has become known for; or, indeed, the graphically beautiful Bing.com homepage with its daily-changing photos. Instead, Yahoo has gone down the “throw as many links at them as possible” route, presumably hoping that if users see plenty of options they’ll presume Yahoo is still relevant.

Mayer is known for her skills in promoting consistency and harmony between services; the exec built a reputation on streamlining UI and bringing services together so that there was no jarring disconnect, however small, when switching between Google properties. Google’s own Larry Page described her as “a tireless champion of our users”, and many others have pointed to her focus on the user experience.

That’s just what Yahoo requires: something that stops it from looking like another tired aggregator, reliant on overwhelming users in order to keep them, and instead gives it a unique identity.

The Cull

That tendency to overwhelm is Mayer’s third key challenge. Google has been good at paring back services and products that have reached the end of their usefulness – even if there’s a fair number of people still actually using them – whereas Yahoo seems reluctant to let anything go. That reticence, presumably down to a fear of chasing away what users they have left, has left the company with a swollen portfolio with little in the way of direction.

“A cull is needed”

A cull is needed, and a decisive one. That’s where Mayer may face the biggest challenge: turning services like Flickr and the Yahoo homepage around demand enthusing staff and communicating your new ideas, while shutting services down can often mean job losses or at the least the fear of patchy job security. With Yahoo’s share price dwindling, few at the company can be feeling especially confident about the future.

Still, if Yahoo wants to move forward, it has to cut some ties with the past. Mayer’s credentials are good, and by all accounts she’s a natural geek which should carry some weight at a company which has suffered from too much clueless management and not enough innovation. The clock is ticking.

Yahoo’s Three Big Challenges is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Yahoo! has been struggling to make a significant impact on the internet for the past few years, and besides its popular email service, Yahoo! Mail, it’s got nothing on its main competitors. Well, it looks like that might change in the future – according to a report from the New York Times, Yahoo! has got a new weapon in its arsenal: one of Google’s top executives (now-ex), Marissa Mayer. After working in Google for the past 13 years, she will now be taking over the reins at Yahoo! starting tomorrow.

Marissa Mayer was Google’s first female engineer, and has been crucial in the search engine giant’s success. Mayer was also responsible for Google’s white search homepage, Gmail, Google News, Google Images and was recently put in charge of Google Maps as well. This comes as a huge blow to Google, seeing how those services are some of the company’s most popular offerings. No word on what Mayer has in store for Yahoo!, but we should find out soon enough.

[Image Credit: Karsten Lemm]

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Yahoo benefits from Google losses in July US search market share, Yahoo now accepts Google and Facebook logins,

It’s been a harrowing few days for Yahoo. Earlier this week, the Yahoo Contributor Network became the victim of an SQL injection attack, with the hackers taking 450,000 email addresses and passwords with them when they left. Today, Yahoo says that it has put additional security measures in place in the aftermath of the attack, and gave us a better idea of who is at risk now that this information is out in the open.

According to Yahoo, the passwords and emails that were stolen belonged to members who signed up for Associated Content prior to May 2010, which is when Yahoo purchased Associated Content and turned it into the Yahoo Contributor Network. If you are one of those longtime users and signed up for Associated Content with a Yahoo email address, Yahoo asks that you log into that account, where you’ll be greeted by a number of account authentication questions. Obviously, if you use the same email address and password across multiple online accounts, it’s probably a good idea to go and change those too.

In a statement made today, Yahoo says that it has identified and fixed the vulnerability that allowed the hackers access in the first place. The company has also “deployed additional security measures for affected Yahoo users, enhanced our underlying security controls” and is currently in the process of notifying users who were affected by the attack.

The hackers said that they wanted this to serve as a wake-up call for those involved. With Yahoo scrambling to beef up security and keep the negative buzz to a minimum, it looks like their plan worked.

[via CNET]

Yahoo strengthens security in aftermath of password breach is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Yesterday Yahoo! suffered a major security breach as it saw over 400,000 passwords leak out. The group responsible for the hack claimed it was to expose the shoddy security methods employed by the company, and wasn’t intended as a malicious attack. It looks like Yahoo! wasn’t the only victim, as several other companies have had their databases exposed and pasted onto the internet due to similar security lapses.

ZDNet reports that Phandroid suffered from a hack on its Android Forums, which exposed usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords. Its not known how many users have been affected by the hack, although the forum has over a million registered users. The administrators of the site say the exploit has been found and fixed, with the hack most likely an attempt to harvest email addresses.

Last night, Billabong and NVIDIA also suffered from hacks. Around 35,000 plaintext passwords are said to have been extracted from Billabong’s database, but only 1,435 were located in a CodePaste.net post. Like the Yahoo! hack, it looks like the hackers took advantage of a MySQL injection exploit to get at the data.

NVIDIA also shut down its Developer Zone last night after in response to a hacking attack on the website. In a statement, NVIDIA says that it shut down the site “in response to attacks on the site by unauthorized third parties who may have gained access to hashed passwords.” There’s no word on how many passwords were taken as a result of the hack, but unlike Billabong, all of the passwords are hashed.

[via The Next Web]

Billabong, NVIDIA, and Android Forums all affected by hacks is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.