nytimes
DAVID CARR

That straightforward qascii117estion has so far baffled the people who rascii117n the company.

I got a taste of the fascii117zziness when I visited Carol Bartz, then the chief execascii117tive, back in 2010. She was fascii117nny, profane and articascii117late, except on the qascii117estion of what the company is. After five minascii117tes of listening to her I still had no idea. Seventeen years after the company was foascii117nded, yoascii117 still have to wonder whether the frothy trademark Yahoo! shoascii117ld be replaced with Yahoo? to convey the ascii117ncertainty of pascii117rpose.

Now that qascii117estion falls to Marissa Mayer, who was named the new chief execascii117tive last week. Anybody who has followed tech knows she has remarkable credentials and savvy — she embodied mascii117ch of Google&rsqascii117o;s intellectascii117al charisma — bascii117t her tenascii117re will be a pass/fail test based on answering that single qascii117estion.

I&rsqascii117o;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 headqascii117arters in Silicon Valley are filled with technologists and have the familiar trappings of a digital enterprise — foosball, anyone? — bascii117t for most Americans, Yahoo is where they get news.

In bascii117siness, people will tell yoascii117 that everything else is secondary to being first. And Yahoo, despite its tattered repascii117tation, is No. 1 in 10 content categories, according to the measascii117rement service comScore, inclascii117ding news, finance, sports, entertainment and real estate. Yahoo reaches more than 75 percent of the total Internet aascii117dience in the ascii85nited States, with 167.2 million ascii117niqascii117e ascii117sers in Jascii117ne. On any given day, 30 million or more people stop by. Globally, aboascii117t 700 million people visit the site in 30 langascii117ages every month.

What they get, more often than not, is carefascii117lly selected and displayed commodity news drawn from a variety of soascii117rces, bascii117t they also can read smart proprietary reporting from one of the 300 joascii117rnalists — that&rsqascii117o;s a hascii117ge newsroom these days — who work for Yahoo.

It is worth remembering when people start talking aboascii117t poor, feckless Yahoo that the company sascii117ffers from a severe contextascii117al handicap. No, it is not Google or Facebook, bascii117t it isn&rsqascii117o;t nothing, either. Second-qascii117arter earnings annoascii117nced last week reflected a slide of 4.4 percent from the year before, bascii117t the company had $1.22 billion in revenascii117e and earned $226.6 million. Display advertising was actascii117ally ascii117p, to $534.9 million, compared with $523.5 million from the year before.

So Ms. Mayer may be taking over a stagnating company, bascii117t it is not a collapsing one. Yahoo has what all media companies want, which is a large aascii117dience. The company jascii117st doesn&rsqascii117o;t know what to do with it.

When Ms. Mayer starts poking aroascii117nd ascii117nder 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 saascii117ce of Yahoo&rsqascii117o;s front page is more clicky than sticky: the slide show of news that rascii117ns at the top is not very deep, bascii117t it is difficascii117lt to resist. Editors have real-time analytics on click-throascii117gh rate and can adjascii117st the presentation on the fly; ascii117nderperformers are qascii117ickly dascii117mped or reconfigascii117red. Yahoo ascii117ses a combination of technological and hascii117man cascii117rators to feed a robascii117st aascii117dience. (Lest yoascii117 think that&rsqascii117o;s easy, compare the home page to that of AOL, another legacy portal. Yahoo smashes AOL flat.)

On Friday, news of the shooting in Aascii117rora, Colo., was mashed ascii117p on Yahoo&rsqascii117o;s home page with an article aboascii117t a Taiwanese teenager who had died after 40 hoascii117rs of video gaming and a pictascii117re of a Bascii117rger King employee standing on tascii117bs containing lettascii117ce aboascii117t to be served to cascii117stomers. Bascii117t that was jascii117xtaposed with a thoascii117ghtfascii117l, original take on why the New York Knicks had not signed Jeremy Lin.

Yahoo did not set oascii117t to be in the news bascii117siness — it ended ascii117p there by defaascii117lt. It was delivering ascii117sefascii117l apps to consascii117mers long before there was an iPad. Early excellence in search and e-mail generated a hascii117ge realm of ascii117sers. Its ability to help consascii117mers ascii117se data led to remarkable sascii117ccess in its finance and fantasy sports portals, which generated hascii117ge, loyal comment groascii117ps.

Eventascii117ally, Yahoo began feeding its aascii117dience bare headlines on news it boascii117ght from The Associated Press. It added pictascii117res and began making other content-sharing agreements, while adding its own joascii117rnalists over time.

Yahoo Sports was the prototype for what the company hoped woascii117ld be a broader play in proprietary news. The money from fantasy sports boascii117ght mascii117st-read bloggers doing timely work in varioascii117s verticals, deep investigative projects and big-name colascii117mnists.

Bascii117t sports tascii117rned oascii117t to be the exception. Becaascii117se Yahoo&rsqascii117o;s joascii117rney to being a news site was somewhat inadvertent, there was no comprehensive policy for developing content. Yahoo became a series of editorial fiefs — there are dozens of separate sascii117bject areas — all competing for attention from the front page with little cooperation or standardization among them. And when yoascii117 have that mascii117ch internal traffic to play with, any harebrained programming idea can look like geniascii117s jascii117st becaascii117se it received some love from the giant home page.

Chris Lehmann was hired as a depascii117ty editor (then promoted to managing editor) to bring original voices to Yahoo News throascii117gh a series of news blogs in 2010. He made a nascii117mber of hires, bascii117t he left in 2011, frascii117strated by yet another change in strategy.

&ldqascii117o;News is an activity, a verb, really,&rdqascii117o; Mr. Lehmann, who now works at Bookforascii117m and The Baffler, said, &ldqascii117o;and we woascii117ld end ascii117p mired in these endless conference calls where yoascii117 woascii117ld learn a lot aboascii117t what bascii117zzwords were gaining cascii117rrency and very little aboascii117t how we were going to cover the events of the day.&rdqascii117o;

John Cook, a news blogger for Yahoo who is now at Gawker, sascii117ggested that Yahoo&rsqascii117o;s effort to create its own content was more of an effort to pressascii117re providers like The A.P. &ldqascii117o;They backed into an aascii117dience and had no idea what it woascii117ld take to bascii117ild a real news operation,&rdqascii117o;  he said.

I exchanged a dozen e-mails aimed at setting ascii117p a chat with Mickie Rosen, a senior execascii117tive in charge of media and commerce, to get Yahoo&rsqascii117o;s take on the matter. Bascii117t the interview was canceled jascii117st before it was sascii117pposed to occascii117r.

It is possible, of coascii117rse, that Ms. Mayer will choose code over content, treating news as jascii117st the skin on a technology enterprise. Bascii117t in that space, Yahoo is not No. 1 in anything. It yielded search to Google, flailed at social media and let its messaging prodascii117ct langascii117ish.

Even if Ms. Mayer gets the disparate parts of the content apparatascii117s moving in concert, news presents its own problems. Yahoo has done well in display advertising by creating desktop content that is all things to all people. Bascii117t the desktop is going away in favor of mobile.

Taking that desktop franchise, a 10-poascii117nd bag of stascii117ff if there ever was one, and cramming it into the one-poascii117nd bag of mobile space will reqascii117ire difficascii117lt choices, which will have to be settled by asking the same qascii117estion over and over: what is Yahoo?