雅虎的極客女神還能呆多久

To the list of books about transformative technologycompanies and their visionary leaders we can nowadd one about Silicon Valley’s wayward soul andwould-be savior: Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer.

關(guān)于變化中的技術(shù)公司，以及它們富于遠見卓識的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)的出版物名單中，如今又多了一本——寫的是硅谷性格倔強的靈魂人物與可能的救星——雅虎的瑪麗莎·梅耶爾(MarissaMayer)。

Ms. Mayer — “Yahoo’s Geek Goddess,” as Vanity Fairhas called her — is not the first well-knownexecutive brought in to reinvent Yahoo, but shecertainly arrived with the most fanfare. When Yahoo hired her away from Google in 2012, shewas only 37, making her the youngest woman to lead a Fortune 500 company. Valerie Jarrettand Nancy Pelosi were among those who called to congratulate her on her new job. Adding tothe excitement was the news that Ms. Mayer was five months pregnant.

 

 

《名利場》(Vanity Fair)雜志稱梅耶爾女士為“雅虎的極客女神”，她并不是雅虎為圖革新而引入的第一位著名經(jīng)理人，但她的到來顯然是動靜最大的。2012年，雅虎把她從谷歌挖來時，她才只有37歲，成了《財富》(Fortune)500強企業(yè)的女領(lǐng)導(dǎo)者中最年輕的一位。瓦萊麗·賈勒特(Valerie Jarrett)和南希·佩洛西(NancyPelosi)等人都致電慶賀她的新工作。更為這個消息錦上添花的是，她當(dāng)時已有五個月的身孕。

Expectations were high, to say the least. In Nicholas Carlson’s “Marissa Mayer and the Fight toSave Yahoo!,” we learn that when Yahoo’s new chief executive showed up for her first day ofwork, she was greeted by posters of her face, done in the style of Shepard Fairey’s BarackObama poster — complete with the word “hope.” At Yahoo, they have a term to describethings that don’t feel like they should be part of the so-called user experience: “yawful.”

至少人們對她的期望很高。從尼古拉斯·卡爾森(Nicholas Carlson)的《瑪麗莎·梅耶爾與拯救雅虎之戰(zhàn)》(Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!)一書中，我們得知，當(dāng)這位雅虎的新任首席執(zhí)行官第一天上班時，迎接她的有印著她頭像的海報，是謝帕德·費雷(Shepard Fairey)為貝拉克·奧巴馬(Barack Obama)做的海報的那種樣式，上面還寫著“希望”的字樣。在雅虎，他們用一個自己造的字眼來描述那種似乎不應(yīng)當(dāng)成為所謂用戶體驗的東西：“yawful”。

“Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!” was excerpted in The New York Times Magazine,and in many ways it reads more like an overgrown article than a book. This is partly a functionof Mr. Carlson’s informal tone and personality-driven approach. But it’s also a function ofthe subject. Yahoo is a big company, but it’s not what you would call an American institution,or even really a relevant force in our culture. And it’s not clear that there’s much more ofsubstance to say about Ms. Mayer that hasn’t already been said in the many profiles of her.

《紐約時報雜志》刊登了《瑪麗莎·梅耶爾與拯救雅虎之戰(zhàn)》的節(jié)選，它在很多方面讀起來更像一篇拉長的文章，而不像是一本書。部分是由于作者卡爾森那種隨意的口吻，以及以人物為主導(dǎo)的方式。但是這也和本書的題材有關(guān)。雅虎是個大公司，但并不是一個典型的美國機構(gòu)，甚至也不是我們的文化中的重要力量。關(guān)于梅耶爾的特寫報道已經(jīng)有了很多，似乎沒有更多實質(zhì)性內(nèi)容是這些報道所不曾涉及的。

That’s not to say that the book isn’t a lot of fun to read, or that Mr. Carlson isn’t steeped in hissubject — an impressive feat considering that Ms. Mayer not only refused to cooperate withhim, but actively interfered with his research and reporting. During her first day on the job atYahoo, he writes in one of the news bites touted in the book’s news release, Ms. Mayerapparently mistook the company’s general counsel for the I.T. guy.

但這并不意味著這本書讀起來沒意思，也不是說卡爾森沒有深入挖掘題材。鑒于梅耶爾不僅拒絕同他合作，而且百般阻撓他的研究和報道，這本書簡直堪稱了不起的成就?？柹诮o這本書的新聞宣傳稿中寫了一句可供媒體引用的話：梅耶爾去雅虎上班第一天，就把公司的法律總顧問錯認為IT工作人員。

Mr. Carlson, the chief correspondent for Business Insider, a website that covers technologyand finance, doesn’t waste words lingering over details or musing on bigger themes —leadership, technology, the nature of innovation. He favors the short paragraph and the briefbiographical sketch. “She was a pompom girl and a debater,” he writes in his précis of Ms.Mayer’s childhood. “She was on the precision dance team.” The result, to borrow the digitalmedia cliché, is corporate history as snackable content.

卡爾森是技術(shù)與金融業(yè)網(wǎng)站“Business Insider”的首席記者，他沒在細節(jié)上浪費筆墨，也沒去思索關(guān)于領(lǐng)導(dǎo)力、技術(shù)與創(chuàng)新本質(zhì)之類的宏大主題。他喜歡短小的段落與簡短的傳記式素描。“她是個拉拉隊長式的女孩，喜歡爭論，”他在概括梅耶爾的童年時這樣寫道。“她總在那個正確的舞蹈隊里”。其結(jié)果，用一句數(shù)字媒體的俗話來說，就是把公司的歷史變成了快餐式內(nèi)容。

Today’s Yahoo is a sprawling hodgepodge of products and services, none indispensable. It isa company adrift, a well-capitalized mess. But as Mr. Carlson reminds us, Yahoo was a pioneerof the Valley. In its earliest incarnation, Yahoo was the digital equivalent of TV Guide, providingan advertising-supported directory of web pages for the still nascent Internet. Before it becameknown as Yahoo, it was called David and Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web, after thecompany’s founders, David Filo and Jerry Yang.

如今的雅虎是各種產(chǎn)品與服務(wù)的大雜燴，但沒有提供什么不可或缺的東西。這是一個隨波逐流的公司，一團盈利良好的混亂。但卡爾森提醒我們，雅虎曾是硅谷的先鋒。在早期，雅虎就相當(dāng)于數(shù)字界的TV Guide，為仍處于早期時代的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)提供有廣告支持的網(wǎng)頁索引。在以“雅虎”這個名字成名之前，它的名字是“大衛(wèi)與杰里的萬維網(wǎng)指南”(David and Jerry ’s Guide to the World Wide Web)——這名字來自公司的兩位創(chuàng)始人，大衛(wèi)·費羅(David Filo)與楊致遠(Jerry Yang)。

They had no trouble monetizing their new business. Yahoo nearly tripled its revenues from1997 to 1998. Its founders became very rich, very quickly. “It takes a female elephant 22months to gestate a calf,” Mr. Carlson writes. “Filo and Yang made their first $100 million in lessthan half that time.”

新公司毫不困難地實現(xiàn)了盈利，從1997到1998年，雅虎的利潤幾乎增長了三倍。創(chuàng)始人迅速暴富。“母象要懷胎22個月才能生出一頭小象，”卡爾森寫道，“而費羅和楊不到11個月就賺了一個億。”

For a little while, anyway, the Yahoo logo was everywhere — on Ben & Jerry’s ice creamcontainers, on Visa cards, on the Zamboni machines at professional hockey games. Thenthings started to fall apart. Yahoo was the victim of larger economic forces, specifically thebursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001. But it also failed to evolve or innovate. As such, itgradually lost market share to its growing number of competitors. And it became deeply uncool,the Reebok to Google’s Nike.

有一段時間，雅虎的logo到處都是——“本與杰里”的冰淇淋柜上、銀行卡上、職業(yè)冰球比賽的贊博尼磨冰機上。后來一切開始分崩離析。雅虎成了更大的經(jīng)濟力量的犧牲品，特別是2001年互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司泡沫的爆發(fā)。但它也沒有能夠?qū)崿F(xiàn)進步或革新。這樣，雅虎便逐漸喪失了市場份額，讓位給日益崛起的競爭對手們。它變得越來越不酷，如果說谷歌是耐克，那雅虎就相當(dāng)于銳步。

Enter Yahoo 2.0, the first of many attempts to turn around the company. The names, at least,would get more creative. There was, for example, Project Godfather, the 2002 plan to rub outYahoo’s competition in the Internet search business. Several years later the company resolvedto stop spreading itself so thin, like peanut butter. The Wall Street Journal labeled this Yahoo’sPeanut Butter Manifesto.

雅虎2.0是公司為自救采取的諸多嘗試中的第一個。至少這些嘗試的名字更有創(chuàng)意了。比如說2002年的“教父計劃”，旨在讓雅虎在網(wǎng)絡(luò)搜索領(lǐng)域內(nèi)的競爭中脫穎而出。幾年后，公司決心不再讓公司到處擴張，像花生醬那樣攤成薄薄的一層?！度A爾街日報》(The Wall Street Journal)稱之為雅虎的“花生醬宣言”。

In Mr. Carlson’s breezy retelling, these hapless efforts to recapture the company’s formerglory amount to almost comic exercises in futility. Yahoo is Silicon Valley’s version of the NewYork Knicks. Its string of well-compensated leaders can’t seem to get anything right. Presentedwith the chance to buy Google for $1 million in 1997, the company passed. Years later, it couldhave had Facebook, which is now valued at more than $200 billion, for $1 billion. Yahoo drewthe line at $850 million.

卡爾森以輕松活潑的敘事講述了雅虎公司為恢復(fù)往日輝煌的不幸嘗試，它們幾乎成了完全無用的笑話。雅虎在硅谷，就像紐約尼克斯隊在籃球界一樣。一系列支取高薪的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人物似乎也未能力挽狂瀾。1997年，公司本有機會以100萬美元的價格收購谷歌，但錯失了這個機會。幾年后，它又有可能收購Facebook，這家公司目前的價值已經(jīng)超過2000億美元，當(dāng)時標價僅10億美元，但雅虎的底價是8.5億美元。

Ms. Mayer emerges from this book’s pages less as a Geek Goddess, or even a computer sciencenerd made good, than as a kind of cyborg, a tone-deaf workaholic who has trouble making eyecontact and requires only four hours of sleep a night. In other words, it turns out she’s nodifferent from your stereotypical male tech executive. Mr. Carlson describes her managementstyle as “dictatorial” and her manner of speaking as “staccato verbosity.” At one point, hegoes so far as to suggest that she may have Asperger’s syndrome. Mr. Carlson issues asimilarly harsh judgment on Ms. Mayer’s tenure at Yahoo. Among many other things, he faultsher for trying to take the company’s “middle-America, Walmart-esque brand” upmarket byhiring Katie Couric as its Global Anchor for $5 million a year. As Mr. Carlson recounts it, thedecision was prompted by a breakfast with the Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who describedYahoo’s women’s site as “dreadful.”

在這本書中，梅耶爾的形象并不像極客女神，甚至也不像那種獲得了成功的電腦科學(xué)狂人;在這本書中，她更像是一個電子人，有點音盲的工作狂，不愿與人四目相對，每天只睡四小時。換言之，她和你心目中那種典型的男性技術(shù)執(zhí)行官的形象沒什么兩樣?？柹鑼懰墓芾盹L(fēng)格是“獨裁專斷”，她的說話方式是“斷奏般的長篇大論”。在某一段里，他甚至認為她可能患有阿斯波哥爾綜合征(一種不善交際、興趣偏狹的內(nèi)向癥狀——編注)。對于梅耶爾在雅虎的工作，卡爾森也給出了同樣嚴厲的論斷。比如，他指責(zé)她以500萬美元年薪雇傭凱蒂·庫里克(Katie Couric)作為雅虎的全球主播，以便提升公司的“中部美國，沃爾瑪式品牌形象”。據(jù)卡爾森描述，這個決定是一次早餐會上，由《Vogue》的主編安娜·溫圖爾(Anna Wintour)提出來的，她說雅虎網(wǎng)站的“女性”板塊“太枯燥”。

Wall Street seems to agree with Mr. Carlson’s assessment. Yahoo has a market capitalizationof about $44 billion. But when you take out its large investment in the Chinese Internetcompany Alibaba, Yahoo’s core business is currently being valued at less than zero dollars.

華爾街似乎對卡爾森的評估心有戚戚。雅虎的市場資本總值約在440億美元。但是除去它的最大一筆投資，也就是在中國互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司阿里巴巴上的投資，雅虎的核心企業(yè)目前一文不值。

Ms. Mayer is still running Yahoo, though it’s anyone’s guess how much longer she will remain.The company’s last chief executive was deposed by the head of a powerful hedge fund with alarge position in Yahoo. In the book’s final pages, Mr. Carlson writes about a similar campaignintroduced recently by a major stockholder who criticized Ms. Mayer for failing to cut costs andfor spending too much on acquisitions that haven’t added to revenues. This stockholder saidthe smartest thing for Yahoo to do at this point would be to sell off its assets and return theproceeds to shareholders.

梅耶爾目前仍然在執(zhí)掌雅虎，盡管所有人都認為她已經(jīng)呆不長久了。雅虎公司的上一任首席執(zhí)行官是被一個很強大、在雅虎很有地位的對沖基金的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)者罷免的。在本書的結(jié)尾部分，卡爾森寫到的事件非常類似，最近，一位雅虎重要的股東批評梅耶爾沒能降低公司成本，將太多資金用于不能為公司盈利的收購。這位股東說，目前雅虎最明智的做法或許是賣掉自己的全部資產(chǎn)，把收入返還給股東。

Maybe the fight to save Yahoo is almost over. Or maybe the company is just coming to the endof another losing season.

或許拯救雅虎的戰(zhàn)役還未結(jié)束，抑或這家公司已經(jīng)走入又一波失敗的終點。