Google veteran turned Yahoo chief executive officer Marissa Mayer wants Microsoft to deliver when it comes to wresting market share from the Internet company she was part of for more than a decade.
During a talk before financial analysts on Tuesday, Mayer spoke of “nice gains” in revenue from Bing-powered searches at Yahoo Web sites, but pointed to a pressing need for the Microsoft engine to win users from rivals.
Yahoo inked a 10-year alliance with Microsoft in 2009 to have Bing handle the heavy lifting of mining and indexing the vast array of online data, leaving the California-based Internet pioneer to customize results for users.
“We have to make the alliance work well enough that we are gaining share from the market,” Mayer said when asked about the future of the partnership onstage at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco. “We collectively want to grow share rather than just trade share with each other.”
Echoing an oft-heard theme at Google, Mayer stressed the need for speed when it comes to delivering fresh and relevant results to online queries.
Google ruled the US market at the end of last year, handling 66.7 percent of core searches, while Microsoft and Yahoo sites fielded 16.3 percent and 12.2 percent respectively, according to industry tracker comScore.
Mayer was Google’s first female engineer when in June 1999 she became employee No. 20 at the company created by Stanford University classmates Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
She left Google in July to take the job of CEO at Yahoo, which is struggling to re-invent itself after being eclipsed as the ruling Internet search platform.
Mayer managed some of Google’s most successful innovations and influenced an array of the company’s best recognized features, such as its globally popular search engine and uncluttered home page.
“During my time at Google, I got to wear different hats; pretty much everything across the board,” Mayer said during her first investor conference appearance in her new role. “Yahoo is a tailor-made job for me.”
Getting people to spend more time at Yahoo was depicted as the company’s biggest business problem.
Mayer stressed she was focusing on staying in tune with Internet lifestyles increasingly centered on smartphones or tablet computers.
About 200 million people access Yahoo properties monthly using mobile devices, according to the Sunnyvale, California-based company.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
NATIONAL SECURITY: Intel’s testing of ACM tools despite US government control ‘highlights egregious gaps in US technology protection policies,’ a former official said Chipmaker Intel Corp has tested chipmaking tools this year from a toolmaker with deep roots in China and two overseas units that were targeted by US sanctions, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Intel, which fended off calls for its CEO’s resignation from US President Donald Trump in August over his alleged ties to China, got the tools from ACM Research Inc, a Fremont, California-based producer of chipmaking equipment. Two of ACM’s units, based in Shanghai and South Korea, were among a number of firms barred last year from receiving US technology over claims they have
BARRIERS: Gudeng’s chairman said it was unlikely that the US could replicate Taiwan’s science parks in Arizona, given its strict immigration policies and cultural differences Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登), which supplies wafer pods to the world’s major semiconductor firms, yesterday said it is in no rush to set up production in the US due to high costs. The company supplies its customers through a warehouse in Arizona jointly operated by TSS Holdings Ltd (德鑫控股), a joint holding of Gudeng and 17 Taiwanese firms in the semiconductor supply chain, including specialty plastic compounds producer Nytex Composites Co (耐特) and automated material handling system supplier Symtek Automation Asia Co (迅得). While the company has long been exploring the feasibility of setting up production in the US to address
OPTION: Uber said it could provide higher pay for batch trips, if incentives for batching is not removed entirely, as the latter would force it to pass on the costs to consumers Uber Technologies Inc yesterday warned that proposed restrictions on batching orders and minimum wages could prompt a NT$20 delivery fee increase in Taiwan, as lower efficiency would drive up costs. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi made the remarks yesterday during his visit to Taiwan. He is on a multileg trip to the region, which includes stops in South Korea and Japan. His visit coincided the release last month of the Ministry of Labor’s draft bill on the delivery sector, which aims to safeguard delivery workers’ rights and improve their welfare. The ministry set the minimum pay for local food delivery drivers at
RSS