Marissa Mayer Figures Yahoo Could’ve Done Better Buying Netflix Instead of Tumblr
During her tenure as CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer admits that the company’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr in 2013 was not the best decision.
Mayer revealed in an interview with Tech Brew that Yahoo had considered purchasing Netflix or Hulu instead of Tumblr, with the former priced at $4 billion and the latter at $1.3 billion at the time.
In retrospect, Mayer believes that either of these acquisitions would have been more beneficial for the company. Yahoo struggled to integrate Tumblr with its other media initiatives, and in 2016, the company had to write down Tumblr’s value by $230 million.
Additionally, the presence of child pornography on the platform led to its temporary removal from the App Store in 2018, with Tumblr banning sexual content just a month later.
As a result, traffic declined by almost 30%, and Verizon sold Tumblr to the owner of WordPress for less than $3 million in 2019.
Although Yahoo tried its hand at original streaming video with Yahoo Screen, producing shows like Other Space and Sin City Saints, and funding a sixth season of Community, Mayer acknowledged that the company could have also mishandled a potential acquisition of Hulu or Netflix.
