During a December 2010 fireside chat, TechCrunch founder (and then-editor) Michael Arrington asked Marissa Mayer what she would do if she hypothetically ran Yahoo.
As you all know, Mayer was VP at Google at the time, but left on Monday to become the CEO of Yahoo. The oddly prophetic interview is even more interesting to watch now that Mayer has taken the Yahoo position.
Here’s the (slightly cleaned up to remove “um,” etc.) Yahoo bit:
Arrington: Do you mind if we do some what-ifs, just for fun? Like, if you ran Yahoo, for example, what would you do?
Mayer laughs
Arrington: Just theoretically. Would you cut back? Lay everyone off, like they’re doing? Would you try to expand in a certain area? I’m just curious.
Mayer: I think if I were Yahoo—I think, one, it’s a difficult job. But I do think Carol’s done a lot of smart things. The partnership on search was smart in many ways. We would’ve liked the partnership to have been with us. But that was smart. I also think that looking at other really interesting brands that are getting a lot of traction on the internet—those are smart acquisitions for them to make to really help broaden out their base, broaden out their platform and ultimately stay relevant.
It’s no longer a hypothetical. The difficult job is Mayer’s and now we get to sit back and see how her thoughts have changed over the past two years and how they will translate into action.
Mayer and Arrington will sit down again at TechCrunch Disrupt in September; the last time Arrington interviewed the Yahoo CEO at Disrupt, it was quite colorful.
The full video is below; if you just want to watch the Yahoo piece, it starts around 28:10
Thanks to Adrianne Jeffries for the heads up.