The Marissa Mayer effect: Can Yahoo! Inc push back into the mix?

New Yahoo CEO/Google Traitor Marissa Mayer wants to hire more engineers and focus Yahoo on “products” rather than on “media” and content-creation.

But, other than email, Yahoo!’s most successful properties are Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance.

Yahoo is a company that has hired five CEOs in as many years, thus now turning to Mayer to essentially do what the others could not. The fanfare with which they are brought in is matched only by the size of the failure they leave in their wake.

In this new era of “all-social everything,” Google and Yahoo struggle to compete with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, while the Web no longer seems to be where the fun is happening at. Companies usually fail by sticking with obsolete technologies (like landlines and AOL dial-up) instead of moving into the future.

How on earth can one person at a company — that dumped 3-4 people in her position in less than 5 years — somehow persuade consumers (who are currently fixated in those aforementioned brands) to resort back to a reduced business model for products when they are already enjoying life via their smartphone?

Could you imagine if music industry ‘online network’ VEVO remained web-only instead of developing mobile apps for the major smartphone platforms?

Exactly my point.

I’m sure those in the universe will point to the recent surge of top women at technology firms with Mayer, Meg Whitman (Hewlett-Packard), Ursula Burns (Xerox), and Virginia Rometty (IBM) and declare “this is a new era” and yadda yadda yadda, but the fact remains that Yahoo as a brand has become what Freddie Jackson became in the early 90′s, or what Ozzy Osbourne chewing bats faces off became…well never.

It’s like in sports with a morbid franchise that has soaked itself in the stench of a losing culture (NFL’s Oakland Raiders & Cincinnati Bengals, NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets, and NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats) that hires a coach who was willingly let go by it’s previous employer, only for said person to sit at the podium and talk about they are going to change everything.

We all deep down want Marissa Mayer to win. No one wants to see anyone fail in a situation unless it’s Reality TV on a network such as VH1 or MTV. But the bottom line is Marissa Mayer is taking over a company that has …. soaked itself in the stench of a losing culture. Could you imagine if Yahoo! put forth the intestinal fortitude 3-4 years ago and made its photo sharing social community Flickr into what monster photo micro-blog app Instagram has become now?

Speaking of, I’m for certain the music industry would have liked to NEVER thought of the Ringle concept. Another example of someone attempting to pump back into a dying business model by thinking the consumer will follow suit.

No one can blame Marissa Mayer for taking a CEO position, no matter what company it is. If Yahoo! Inc offered you a CEO job, no matter if the company produced and sold dog food, you’re taking the job. NBA Superstar Joe Johnson can relate, as he was offered a few bucks over his worth to play basketball somewhere – tell me you wouldn’t accept that contract and I’ll sell you the Manhattan Bridge with the D subway still sitting in congestion.

But at the end of the day, Yahoo! Inc has succeeded at maybe one thing over the past few years: failing.