Bits Blog: Yahoo’s No. 2 Executive Made More Than His Boss (and Virtually Everyone Else)

DealBook: Mayer, Yahoo’s C.E.O., Goes Chic

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Bits Blog: Secret Court Declassifies Yahoo’s Role in Disclosure Fight

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Yahoo’s Tumblr Deal Is a Bet on a Shift in Social Media

It also heralds a larger shift in social media. Facebook arguably invented modern social networking, and is still the king. But increasingly its approach is seen as passive and outdated as people flock to sites like Tumblr where they can be more actively engaged in creating personal, expressive content to share — and which could potentially translate to advertising dollars.

“People love a stage or a pulpit from which they can broadcast,” S. Shyam Sundar, a director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory at Pennsylvania State University, explained. “The genie is out of the bottle. Everyone loves it and it’s very seductive for users to get online and be a source of content, rather than just consuming passively.”

This is behind the appeal of sites like Tumblr, where millions have created signature blogs; or Reddit, the news aggregator, which is encouraging users to make and upload video content to share; or video sites like YouTube. Also, Vine, a Twitter app that allows people to easily make and post six-second videos has been wildly popular since its debut in January. One of Vine’s creators, Dom Hofmann, said its initial success was “rooted in the simplicity of the tool.”

Snapchat, the messaging application, which lets people add text or draw cartoons on top of photos and videos, is processing upward of 150 million images each day. And Instagram, which Facebook acquired last year, has attracted more than 100 million users in its short life span — letting people add vintage effects and other filters to their photos.

The more services like Vine and Tumblr can “come up with ways to let people control and generate content and project identity,” Mr. Sundar predicted, the more successful they will be.

Still, these newer sites have not yet proved they are moneymakers, which makes Yahoo’s move a big bet. And as much as Tumblr’s sale can be seen as a success story for the small company, it also hints at the darker struggles of a social media service that is rich in users and nothing else.

Plus, Facebook is still a force to be reckoned with. The company has a billion-plus users and generated $5 billion in revenue last year. But except for the Instagram acquisition, Facebook has been slow to introduce tools to let members make and create interesting content beyond uploading photos and videos.

The result is that it has evolved more into a social directory, a kind of yellow pages of the Internet, where people spend time tending to their public image and endlessly tweaking security settings to keep their party pictures private. And signs have begun to emerge that users are becoming bored and disenchanted with the site.

A recent report by Piper Jaffray that surveyed 5,200 American teenagers on their online use found that while Facebook was still the most important media destination for teenagers, its popularity slipped by 9 percent from spring of 2012.

Gene Munster, one of the lead analysts on the survey, said that if anything, the results showed that the taste and interest of Web users, particularly younger ones, was fickle and fleeting.

“It’s not a question of whether or not Facebook will stay relevant,” Mr. Munster said. “On the margin, they will still be relevant. It’s about the potential for declining engagement and what that impact is over the longer-term for making money.”

People have so many news feeds, sites, apps and in-boxes competing for their time, said Kim Celestre, an analyst with Forrester Research, that the sites and services where they are active participants are more likely to hold their attention for longer, attracting advertising dollars. Tumblr says its members spend 24 billion minutes on the site each month.

“Big marketing campaigns are looking to bring people into their brand and immerse them,” she said.

Earnings Report Gives Yahoo’s New Chief a Good Start

Yahoo reported stronger earnings than a year earlier, but future growth remained uncertain. “We have a fundamental foundation on which to grow,” Ms. Mayer said in a conference call with analysts. “We believe Yahoo’s best days lie ahead. We intend to win.”

Largely because of a long-awaited sale of its stake in Alibaba last month, Yahoo reported Monday that net income in the third quarter, which ended Sept. 30, rose sharply to $3.16 billion, or $2.64 a share, from $293 million, or 23 cents a share, in the same quarter a year ago. That included a net gain of $2.8 billion related to the Alibaba sale and restructuring charges of $16 million, the company said.

That news sent Yahoo’s shares up 4 percent in after-hours trading, but some analysts were less sanguine. “Earnings were decent — hooray! — the wheels didn’t come off the bus,” said Colin Gillis, an Internet analyst with BCG Partners. “But there are still some serious issues facing her.”

Those problems start with the company’s stagnant revenue, which was $1.2 billion in the quarter. Its income from operations decreased 14 percent, to $152 million from $177 million in the year earlier period.

With 700 million users each month, Yahoo remains one of the most visited sites on the Web, but it has been ceding its share of the online display ad market to rivals like Facebook and Google.

Its search business, which Yahoo outsourced to Microsoft in 2009, is on its last legs, propped up only because of a revenue-guarantee clause in its contract with Microsoft.

In the call with analysts, Ms. Mayer acknowledged that Yahoo’s search deal with Microsoft had been disappointing. “We’ve experienced some disappointment on the monetization, which is why the revenue guarantee is in place,” she said. Yahoo’s revenue guarantee expires in March. Without the guarantee, Yahoo’s revenue could fall next year by $100 million.

Ms. Mayer, who joined the company in July after 13 years at Google, said Yahoo’s top priority was to “make the world’s daily habits inspiring and entertaining.” She said Yahoo would renew its focus on its search business, modernize its home page, mail and messenger services, develop a mobile presence and seek out “double-digit million-dollar” acquisitions.

She said the company was “very well-positioned” to capitalize on the shift of consumers to mobile devices. Noting that the most frequent use of smartphones was checking weather, sports scores, financial information, watching videos, sharing photos, getting news and playing games, she asked, “Does that sound like any particular company that you know?”

To lure engineers to the company and to improve employee morale, one of the first things Ms. Mayer did was offer free cafeteria food and give employees the option to trade in their BlackBerry phones for iPhones and Android-powered smartphones.

“Cultural change can’t be bought and the vast majority of what we’ve done has cost nothing,” Ms. Mayer said of those moves. “I’m already impressed in the change in our applicant pool.”

Bits Blog: Yahoo's C.E.O., Marissa Mayer, Returns to Work With New C.O.O.

After a two-week maternity leave, Yahoo’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer, is back at work with one of her former Google colleagues in tow. (She alerted everyone to her dedication to work via Twitter.)

Ms. Mayer also announced Monday that she had hired Henrique De Castro, a vice president at Google, as Yahoo’s chief operating officer. Yahoo lured Mr. De Castro with a hefty pay package that according to a regulatory filing will include a $600,000 base salary plus a bonus that — depending how he performs — could be worth twice that much. Mr. De Castro will also receive $36 million in stock, half of that as a one-time retention equity award and the other half as performance-based stock options.

Most recently, Mr. De Castro led Google’s worldwide partner business solutions group, where he headed up advertising platforms and services for Google’s publisher and commerce partners. Luring advertisers back to Yahoo is a top priority for the company. Yahoo was once the biggest seller of display ads in the United States, but ceded that crown to Facebook and Google last year.

“Henrique is an incredibly accomplished and rigorous business leader, and I’m personally excited to have him join Yahoo’s strong leadership team,” Ms. Mayer said in a statement. “His operational experience in Internet advertising and his proven success in structuring and scaling
global organizations make him the perfect fit for Yahoo as we propel the business to its next phase of growth.”

Before his current position, Mr. De Castro led Google’s media, platforms and mobile division. That mobile experience should come in handy at Yahoo, where the company has yet to formulate a mobile strategy.

Mr. De Castro has been with Google since 2006. Before that, he served in various positions at Dell and McKinsey & Company. He is expected to start on Jan. 22.

Yahoo’s Choice of New Chief Financial Officer Suggests a Plan for Deals

But two months in, she has yet to do the one thing that shareholders, analysts and advertisers so desperately seek: articulate a clear vision for the flailing Internet company, whose revenue has flattened and stock price has dropped by half over the last five years. She spoke to employees on Tuesday, roughly outlining her plans. The company, however, did not disclose any details.

An executive hiring, announced Tuesday, may offer a hint to her thinking: Ms. Mayer announced that she would replace Tim Morse, Yahoo’s chief financial officer, with Ken Goldman, the current chief financial officer of Fortinet, a public computer security company.

Analysts said the ouster of Mr. Morse, who had a history of cost-cutting, suggests Yahoo is ready to expand through renewed investments and acquisitions.

“Tim Morse was ‘Mr. Margin Expansion,’ ” said Colin Gillis, an Internet analyst at BGC Partners. “To turn the company around and compete with the big boys, Yahoo will need to spend, spend, spend.”

With 700 million users each month, Yahoo remains one of the most visited sites on the Web, but it has been ceding its share of the online display ad market to rivals like Facebook and Google.

To lure back advertisers, Ms. Mayer said she would focus on user experience and on mobile, where Yahoo has yet to dip a toe. She told employees to expect “acqui-hires” — Silicon Valley-speak for acquisitions made for talent rather than technology.

Ms. Mayer is expected to have a baby in the next few weeks, but has said she expects to return to work quickly. Previous chiefs — four in the last five years, plus two interim chiefs — have failed to carry out their own long-term plans, largely because they have been unable to articulate what it is that Yahoo actually does.

Yahoo made its name in search but lost that market to Google and then proceeded to miss the boat on every big Internet trend since. It was too focused on reinventing itself as a multimedia company to notice people were migrating to social networks and mobile devices as gateways for information and entertainment. Yahoo’s home page remains cluttered and sorely lacking a brand of its own.

Board members hope Ms. Mayer will restore some life to the moribund brand. She came from Google, where she was hired as one of its first engineers. She recently closed a $7.6 billion deal with Alibaba that gives Yahoo, after taxes and paybacks to shareholders, $625 million. She indicated Tuesday that employees should expect acquisitions, said one Yahoo employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

But Yahoo has had a difficult time persuading entrepreneurs to join. In 2009, Google’s bid to acquire Yelp fell apart at the last minute after Yahoo offered to pay 50 percent more than Google. According to one person close to the talks, both deals fell apart because Yelp’s management team refused to work at Yahoo and Yelp’s board refused Google’s terms.

More recently, the founder of a start-up, who refused to be named for fear it would jeopardize a business relationship with Yahoo, said Yahoo recently inquired about a potential acquisition.

The person, who has also been courted by Facebook and Google, agreed to a meeting but said the company was turned off by Yahoo executives’ failure to do basic due diligence.

“At Facebook and Google, they know your underwear size before you walk in the door,” this person said. “At Yahoo, it was clear they hadn’t even Googled me.”

DealBook: Yahoo's Chief Reviews Plan for Alibaba Proceeds

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg NewsMarissa Mayer, the new chief of Yahoo.

Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s newly minted chief executive, is reworking the company’s playbook and nothing seems off limits.

According to a filing submitted on Thursday, Ms. Mayer — who joined Yahoo last month — was “reviewing the company’s business strategy.”

The filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission said that she was assessing the company’s restructuring plan, its acquisition strategy and its plans to spend the billions in proceeds that it expects to reap from its pending deal with the Alibaba Group. Yahoo, which is waiting to complete a deal to sell a large block of Alibaba shares back to its Chinese partner, has previously said that it would distribute those proceeds to Yahoo shareholders, perhaps through a buyback program.

That plan, however, is now up for debate. “This review process may lead to a re-evaluation of, or changes to, the company’s current plans, including its restructuring plan, its share repurchase program, and its previously announced plans for returning to shareholders substantially all of the after-tax cash proceeds of the initial share repurchase by Alibaba Group,” the company said in the filing.

Yahoo did not respond to requests for comment. Shares of Yahoo, which slipped 1 percent on Thursday to close at $16.01, continued to fall in after-hours trading.

Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, is close to raising about $8 billion to buy back a 20 percent stake that Yahoo owns. From the deal, Yahoo will reap about $7.1 billion, before taxes.

Ms. Mayer, a former Google executive, is trying to lay out a clear road map for Yahoo, which has been bruised by a string of management shuffles. So far this year, three executives have led Yahoo, including Scott Thompson, the former president of PayPal who left in the wake of an inquiry into his academic credentials, and Ross Levinsohn, who briefly served as the company’s interim chief executive. Mr. Levinsohn, who ran Yahoo’s media business, resigned last week.

The Media Equation: Yahoo’s Big Question: What Is It?

That straightforward question has so far baffled the people who run the company.

I got a taste of the fuzziness when I visited Carol Bartz, then the chief executive, back in 2010. She was funny, profane and articulate, except on the question of what the company is. After five minutes of listening to her I still had no idea. Seventeen years after the company was founded, you still have to wonder whether the frothy trademark Yahoo! should be replaced with Yahoo? to convey the uncertainty of purpose.

Now that question falls to Marissa Mayer, who was named the new chief executive last week. Anybody who has followed tech knows she has remarkable credentials and savvy — she embodied much of Google’s intellectual charisma — but her tenure will be a pass/fail test based on answering that single question.

I’m going to take a whack at it and say that Yahoo is a media company, mostly by accident (more on that in a bit). Yes, its headquarters in Silicon Valley are filled with technologists and have the familiar trappings of a digital enterprise — foosball, anyone? — but for most Americans, Yahoo is where they get news.

In business, people will tell you that everything else is secondary to being first. And Yahoo, despite its tattered reputation, is No. 1 in 10 content categories, according to the measurement service comScore, including news, finance, sports, entertainment and real estate. Yahoo reaches more than 75 percent of the total Internet audience in the United States, with 167.2 million unique users in June. On any given day, 30 million or more people stop by. Globally, about 700 million people visit the site in 30 languages every month.

What they get, more often than not, is carefully selected and displayed commodity news drawn from a variety of sources, but they also can read smart proprietary reporting from one of the 300 journalists — that’s a huge newsroom these days — who work for Yahoo.

It is worth remembering when people start talking about poor, feckless Yahoo that the company suffers from a severe contextual handicap. No, it is not Google or Facebook, but it isn’t nothing, either. Second-quarter earnings announced last week reflected a slide of 4.4 percent from the year before, but the company had $1.22 billion in revenue and earned $226.6 million. Display advertising was actually up, to $534.9 million, compared with $523.5 million from the year before.

So Ms. Mayer may be taking over a stagnating company, but it is not a collapsing one. Yahoo has what all media companies want, which is a large audience. The company just doesn’t know what to do with it.

When Ms. Mayer starts poking around under the hood of the news operation, she will find a home page that has the kind of traffic that can melt servers when it points to another site.

The secret sauce of Yahoo’s front page is more clicky than sticky: the slide show of news that runs at the top is not very deep, but it is difficult to resist. Editors have real-time analytics on click-through rate and can adjust the presentation on the fly; underperformers are quickly dumped or reconfigured. Yahoo uses a combination of technological and human curators to feed a robust audience. (Lest you think that’s easy, compare the home page to that of AOL, another legacy portal. Yahoo smashes AOL flat.)

On Friday, news of the shooting in Aurora, Colo., was mashed up on Yahoo’s home page with an article about a Taiwanese teenager who had died after 40 hours of video gaming and a picture of a Burger King employee standing on tubs containing lettuce about to be served to customers. But that was juxtaposed with a thoughtful, original take on why the New York Knicks had not signed Jeremy Lin.

Yahoo did not set out to be in the news business — it ended up there by default. It was delivering useful apps to consumers long before there was an iPad. Early excellence in search and e-mail generated a huge realm of users. Its ability to help consumers use data led to remarkable success in its finance and fantasy sports portals, which generated huge, loyal comment groups.

Eventually, Yahoo began feeding its audience bare headlines on news it bought from The Associated Press. It added pictures and began making other content-sharing agreements, while adding its own journalists over time.

Yahoo Sports was the prototype for what the company hoped would be a broader play in proprietary news. The money from fantasy sports bought must-read bloggers doing timely work in various verticals, deep investigative projects and big-name columnists.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;

Twitter: @carr2n

The Media Equation: Yahoo’s Big Question: What Is It?

That straightforward question has so far baffled the people who run the company.

I got a taste of the fuzziness when I visited Carol Bartz, then the chief executive, back in 2010. She was funny, profane and articulate, except on the question of what the company is. After five minutes of listening to her I still had no idea. Seventeen years after the company was founded, you still have to wonder whether the frothy trademark Yahoo! should be replaced with Yahoo? to convey the uncertainty of purpose.

Now that question falls to Marissa Mayer, who was named the new chief executive last week. Anybody who has followed tech knows she has remarkable credentials and savvy — she embodied much of Google’s intellectual charisma — but her tenure will be a pass/fail test based on answering that single question.

I’m going to take a whack at it and say that Yahoo is a media company, mostly by accident (more on that in a bit). Yes, its headquarters in Silicon Valley are filled with technologists and have the familiar trappings of a digital enterprise — foosball, anyone? — but for most Americans, Yahoo is where they get news.

In business, people will tell you that everything else is secondary to being first. And Yahoo, despite its tattered reputation, is No. 1 in 10 content categories, according to the measurement service comScore, including news, finance, sports, entertainment and real estate. Yahoo reaches more than 75 percent of the total Internet audience in the United States, with 167.2 million unique users in June. On any given day, 30 million or more people stop by. Globally, about 700 million people visit the site in 30 languages every month.

What they get, more often than not, is carefully selected and displayed commodity news drawn from a variety of sources, but they also can read smart proprietary reporting from one of the 300 journalists — that’s a huge newsroom these days — who work for Yahoo.

It is worth remembering when people start talking about poor, feckless Yahoo that the company suffers from a severe contextual handicap. No, it is not Google or Facebook, but it isn’t nothing, either. Second-quarter earnings announced last week reflected a slide of 4.4 percent from the year before, but the company had $1.22 billion in revenue and earned $226.6 million. Display advertising was actually up, to $534.9 million, compared with $523.5 million from the year before.

So Ms. Mayer may be taking over a stagnating company, but it is not a collapsing one. Yahoo has what all media companies want, which is a large audience. The company just doesn’t know what to do with it.

When Ms. Mayer starts poking around under the hood of the news operation, she will find a home page that has the kind of traffic that can melt servers when it points to another site.

The secret sauce of Yahoo’s front page is more clicky than sticky: the slide show of news that runs at the top is not very deep, but it is difficult to resist. Editors have real-time analytics on click-through rate and can adjust the presentation on the fly; underperformers are quickly dumped or reconfigured. Yahoo uses a combination of technological and human curators to feed a robust audience. (Lest you think that’s easy, compare the home page to that of AOL, another legacy portal. Yahoo smashes AOL flat.)

On Friday, news of the shooting in Aurora, Colo., was mashed up on Yahoo’s home page with an article about a Taiwanese teenager who had died after 40 hours of video gaming and a picture of a Burger King employee standing on tubs containing lettuce about to be served to customers. But that was juxtaposed with a thoughtful, original take on why the New York Knicks had not signed Jeremy Lin.

Yahoo did not set out to be in the news business — it ended up there by default. It was delivering useful apps to consumers long before there was an iPad. Early excellence in search and e-mail generated a huge realm of users. Its ability to help consumers use data led to remarkable success in its finance and fantasy sports portals, which generated huge, loyal comment groups.

Eventually, Yahoo began feeding its audience bare headlines on news it bought from The Associated Press. It added pictures and began making other content-sharing agreements, while adding its own journalists over time.

Yahoo Sports was the prototype for what the company hoped would be a broader play in proprietary news. The money from fantasy sports bought must-read bloggers doing timely work in various verticals, deep investigative projects and big-name columnists.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;

Twitter: @carr2n

The Media Equation: Yahoo’s Big Question: What Is It?

That straightforward question has so far baffled the people who run the company.

I got a taste of the fuzziness when I visited Carol Bartz, then the chief executive, back in 2010. She was funny, profane and articulate, except on the question of what the company is. After five minutes of listening to her I still had no idea. Seventeen years after the company was founded, you still have to wonder whether the frothy trademark Yahoo! should be replaced with Yahoo? to convey the uncertainty of purpose.

Now that question falls to Marissa Mayer, who was named the new chief executive last week. Anybody who has followed tech knows she has remarkable credentials and savvy — she embodied much of Google’s intellectual charisma — but her tenure will be a pass/fail test based on answering that single question.

I’m going to take a whack at it and say that Yahoo is a media company, mostly by accident (more on that in a bit). Yes, its headquarters in Silicon Valley are filled with technologists and have the familiar trappings of a digital enterprise — foosball, anyone? — but for most Americans, Yahoo is where they get news.

In business, people will tell you that everything else is secondary to being first. And Yahoo, despite its tattered reputation, is No. 1 in 10 content categories, according to the measurement service comScore, including news, finance, sports, entertainment and real estate. Yahoo reaches more than 75 percent of the total Internet audience in the United States, with 167.2 million unique users in June. On any given day, 30 million or more people stop by. Globally, about 700 million people visit the site in 30 languages every month.

What they get, more often than not, is carefully selected and displayed commodity news drawn from a variety of sources, but they also can read smart proprietary reporting from one of the 300 journalists — that’s a huge newsroom these days — who work for Yahoo.

It is worth remembering when people start talking about poor, feckless Yahoo that the company suffers from a severe contextual handicap. No, it is not Google or Facebook, but it isn’t nothing, either. Second-quarter earnings announced last week reflected a slide of 4.4 percent from the year before, but the company had $1.22 billion in revenue and earned $226.6 million. Display advertising was actually up, to $534.9 million, compared with $523.5 million from the year before.

So Ms. Mayer may be taking over a stagnating company, but it is not a collapsing one. Yahoo has what all media companies want, which is a large audience. The company just doesn’t know what to do with it.

When Ms. Mayer starts poking around under the hood of the news operation, she will find a home page that has the kind of traffic that can melt servers when it points to another site.

The secret sauce of Yahoo’s front page is more clicky than sticky: the slide show of news that runs at the top is not very deep, but it is difficult to resist. Editors have real-time analytics on click-through rate and can adjust the presentation on the fly; underperformers are quickly dumped or reconfigured. Yahoo uses a combination of technological and human curators to feed a robust audience. (Lest you think that’s easy, compare the home page to that of AOL, another legacy portal. Yahoo smashes AOL flat.)

On Friday, news of the shooting in Aurora, Colo., was mashed up on Yahoo’s home page with an article about a Taiwanese teenager who had died after 40 hours of video gaming and a picture of a Burger King employee standing on tubs containing lettuce about to be served to customers. But that was juxtaposed with a thoughtful, original take on why the New York Knicks had not signed Jeremy Lin.

Yahoo did not set out to be in the news business — it ended up there by default. It was delivering useful apps to consumers long before there was an iPad. Early excellence in search and e-mail generated a huge realm of users. Its ability to help consumers use data led to remarkable success in its finance and fantasy sports portals, which generated huge, loyal comment groups.

Eventually, Yahoo began feeding its audience bare headlines on news it bought from The Associated Press. It added pictures and began making other content-sharing agreements, while adding its own journalists over time.

Yahoo Sports was the prototype for what the company hoped would be a broader play in proprietary news. The money from fantasy sports bought must-read bloggers doing timely work in various verticals, deep investigative projects and big-name columnists.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;

Twitter: @carr2n

Bits Blog: Yahoo’s Mayer Gets Hefty Pay Package

Paul Zimmerman/Getty Images

10:10 p.m. | Updated More details added.

SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo lured Marissa Mayer from Google with a lavish pay package that could total $129 million over five years — if she is able to get the company growing.

Yahoo disclosed details of its new chief executive’s compensation package in a regulatory filing on Thursday. It is larger than the pay package of the average chief executive in Silicon Valley, but not the largest among chiefs of publicly held technology companies.

Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, has a compensation package valued at $378 million in salary, bonus and stock award that vests over 10 years. His annual base salary is $900,000.

Ms. Mayer’s pay package is higher than that of Meg Whitman, her counterpart at Hewlett-Packard. When H.P. hired Ms. Whitman, 55, as its chief executive, it offered her a $1 salary and stock options valued at $16.1 million that she cannot exercise unless H.P.’s stock meets certain targets by October 2013. She will also get a $6 million annual bonus if all goes well.

Ms. Mayer’s former boss at Google, Larry Page, receives only $1 in annual salary. But as a co-founder of the company, he owns more than 26.2 million shares of Google stock, which, at Thursday’s closing price of $593.06 a share, is worth about $15.5 billion.

Ms. Mayer’s package includes a $1 million annual base salary and a bonus of up to $4 million a year, depending on company performance. She will receive $12 million in the form of a stock payment this year — half in restricted stock, the remainder in options — and comparable awards in subsequent years. Yahoo will also give her a one-time “retention equity award” worth $30 million that vests over five years.

Google never had to disclose Ms. Mayer’s salary because she was not one of the highest-compensated executives at the company, although she was one of the most visible. But to make up for what she left on the table at Google, Yahoo said it would pay her a one-time “make whole” stock grant of $14 million.

“It’s big,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners. “But Yahoo is a multibillion-dollar company. If she can create value, it’s a small percentage. If she doesn’t, she’ll join a long succession of Yahoo C.E.O.’s with sizable pay packages who did not add value.”

Yahoo offered Ms. Mayer more than it had her immediate predecessors, Scott Thompson and Carol Bartz. It offered Mr. Thompson a $1 million base salary and stock grants worth about $22.5 million. He left four months into the job, without severance, amid accusations that he had exaggerated his credentials on his resume, but he managed to keep $7 million in cash and stock grants that had already vested.

When Ms. Bartz joined Yahoo in 2009, the company offered her a $1 million salary and stock and cash grants worth $19 million, plus options worth five million shares that exercised at $11.73.

Ms. Mayer, known for holding extravagant parties, collecting expensive art and wearing designer gowns, does not lack for money. As Google’s 20th employee, she made millions in Google stock while running its search business and overseeing successful products like Gmail and Google Maps.

Bits Blog: Yahoo’s Mayer Gets Hefty Pay Package

Paul Zimmerman/Getty Images

10:10 p.m. | Updated More details added.

SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo lured Marissa Mayer from Google with a lavish pay package that could total $129 million over five years — if she is able to get the company growing.

Yahoo disclosed details of its new chief executive’s compensation package in a regulatory filing on Thursday. It is larger than the pay package of the average chief executive in Silicon Valley, but not the largest among chiefs of publicly held technology companies.

Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, has a compensation package valued at $378 million in salary, bonus and stock award that vests over 10 years. His annual base salary is $900,000.

Ms. Mayer’s pay package is higher than that of Meg Whitman, her counterpart at Hewlett-Packard. When H.P. hired Ms. Whitman, 55, as its chief executive, it offered her a $1 salary and stock options valued at $16.1 million that she cannot exercise unless H.P.’s stock meets certain targets by October 2013. She will also get a $6 million annual bonus if all goes well.

Ms. Mayer’s former boss at Google, Larry Page, receives only $1 in annual salary. But as a co-founder of the company, he owns more than 26.2 million shares of Google stock, which, at Thursday’s closing price of $593.06 a share, is worth about $15.5 billion.

Ms. Mayer’s package includes a $1 million annual base salary and a bonus of up to $4 million a year, depending on company performance. She will receive $12 million in the form of a stock payment this year — half in restricted stock, the remainder in options — and comparable awards in subsequent years. Yahoo will also give her a one-time “retention equity award” worth $30 million that vests over five years.

Google never had to disclose Ms. Mayer’s salary because she was not one of the highest-compensated executives at the company, although she was one of the most visible. But to make up for what she left on the table at Google, Yahoo said it would pay her a one-time “make whole” stock grant of $14 million.

“It’s big,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners. “But Yahoo is a multibillion-dollar company. If she can create value, it’s a small percentage. If she doesn’t, she’ll join a long succession of Yahoo C.E.O.’s with sizable pay packages who did not add value.”

Yahoo offered Ms. Mayer more than it had her immediate predecessors, Scott Thompson and Carol Bartz. It offered Mr. Thompson a $1 million base salary and stock grants worth about $22.5 million. He left four months into the job, without severance, amid accusations that he had exaggerated his credentials on his resume, but he managed to keep $7 million in cash and stock grants that had already vested.

When Ms. Bartz joined Yahoo in 2009, the company offered her a $1 million salary and stock and cash grants worth $19 million, plus options worth five million shares that exercised at $11.73.

Ms. Mayer, known for holding extravagant parties, collecting expensive art and wearing designer gowns, does not lack for money. As Google’s 20th employee, she made millions in Google stock while running its search business and overseeing successful products like Gmail and Google Maps.

DealBook: The Yahoos at Sun Valley

SUN VALLEY, Idaho — There are plenty of Yahoos at Allen & Company’s annual pow-wow here this year.

The Internet company’s co-founder Jerry Yang and his daughter were spotted rushing to the children’s playpen on Wednesday. CNBC managed to lob a few questions to the ex-chief Terry Semel on Tuesday. And David Goldberg, another former Yahoo executive, is attending the conference with his wife Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook.

But one person who has yet to show is the maybe-soon-to-be C.E.O., Ross Levinsohn, the interim head who is still waiting to hear whether he will get the top spot permanently.

There had been speculation that the Yahoo board would finalize its choice this week and an announcement could be made at its annual meeting on Thursday in Santa Clara, Calif. But the board is unlikely to name its pick on Thursday, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions are private. AllThingsD had previously reported that it is unlikely that Yahoo’s board will finalize its choice this week.

Mr. Levisohn, the extroverted advertising veteran, is expected to make his way to Idaho late Thursday, these people said.

While Mr. Levinsohn has not exactly hidden his ambitions for the top job since taking the interim title in May, those close to him say that he could easily find a soft landing at another media company if the Yahoo board goes in a different direction. And what better place to schmooze with media moguls, than Sun Valley?

As the Yahoo saga drags on, some former executives in Sun Valley seemed to be content to be outside the eye of the storm.

In 2008, Mr. Yang was spotted with his head buried in his hands by the Sun Valley Inn duck pond during the Allen & Company conference, frustrated as Microsoft was courting Yahoo.

When DealBook asked Mr. Yang if he missed the drama on Tuesday, he was quick to change the subject.

“I know my daughter is excited about being here.”

DealBook: The Yahoos at Sun Valley

SUN VALLEY, Idaho — There are plenty of Yahoos at Allen & Company’s annual pow-wow here this year.

The Internet company’s co-founder Jerry Yang and his daughter were spotted rushing to the children’s playpen on Wednesday. CNBC managed to lob a few questions to the ex-chief Terry Semel on Tuesday. And David Goldberg, another former Yahoo executive, is attending the conference with his wife Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook.

But one person who has yet to show is the maybe-soon-to-be C.E.O., Ross Levinsohn, the interim head who is still waiting to hear whether he will get the top spot permanently.

There had been speculation that the Yahoo board would finalize its choice this week and an announcement could be made at its annual meeting on Thursday in Santa Clara, Calif. But the board is unlikely to name its pick on Thursday, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions are private. AllThingsD had previously reported that it is unlikely that Yahoo’s board will finalize its choice this week.

Mr. Levisohn, the extroverted advertising veteran, is expected to make his way to Idaho late Thursday, these people said.

While Mr. Levinsohn has not exactly hidden his ambitions for the top job since taking the interim title in May, those close to him say that he could easily find a soft landing at another media company if the Yahoo board goes in a different direction. And what better place to schmooze with media moguls, than Sun Valley?

As the Yahoo saga drags on, some former executives in Sun Valley seemed to be content to be outside the eye of the storm.

In 2008, Mr. Yang was spotted with his head buried in his hands by the Sun Valley Inn duck pond during the Allen & Company conference, frustrated as Microsoft was courting Yahoo.

When DealBook asked Mr. Yang if he missed the drama on Tuesday, he was quick to change the subject.

“I know my daughter is excited about being here.”