Yahoo! CEO Offers Employees Free iPhone 5, Androids, WP8
Company wants staff using the same devices as its users.
When Yahoo! CEO Marissa Meyer joined the company back in July, she knew she had a big job ahead of her. One of the changes she's implementing is a new program called 'Yahoo! Smart Phones, Smart Fun' and will see every single Yahoo! employee receive a brand new top-of-the-line smartphone for free. Business Insider says the news was confirmed via an internal memo and the program will cover both full time and part time employees. The idea behind this show of generosity is that Yahoo! wants staff using what Yahoo! users are using.
BI reports that employees will have a choice of five different top-end smartphones, including Apple's newly-announced but as yet unreleased iPhone 5. If you're working for Yahoo! and you're not an Apple fan, you can choose Samsung's Galaxy S III, an HTC One X, an HTC EVO 4G LTE, or Nokia's Lumia 920.
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Is this just a company phone like any number of companies require there employees to carry? If so how is this news? It seems to be pretty standard for many companies to provide company phones to employees with the bill paid for.
Rival in what? Google powers the Yahoo search engine and has for quite a while now.
I've heard discussions/rumors that Yahoo is out-of-touch with the entire mobile platform. While they make mobile apps for various things, they're not very responsive to the mobile platform as a whole. I wonder if doing this--in addition to requesting your employees to be available all the time now that they have work phones--is a way to get the entire company more ingrained in mobile (and maybe hinting a change of business strategy?).
Also, literally ALL yahoo employees? Or a certain level and above?
Umm Bing powers the Yahoo search engine and has for a while now...
Oops, I just checked and it would seem that my info is a little inaccurate:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/0cb347b8-997a-11df-9834-00144feab49a.html
... both of them?
Check your facts douche!
Yahoo searches are and have been powered by Bing for a long time now.
I don't think google is their chief rival, but even if it were, their userbase is largely composed of mobile--so they have to have a good handle on iOS, Android, and (eventually) WP. It's no different than google making apps for the Apple app store. Like it or not, a significant portion of your userbase might lie in "competing" services--but you're at a huge loss if you don't address that.
I would argue that smartphones are harder to use over "dumb" phones but well I have a hard time navigating my dads phone where as most smartphones have a interface that makes more logical sense and is easier to read.
Yahoo may have fall in terms of popularity as a search engine, but they're a leader when it comes to providing content (not just sharing news, but they actually have investigative journalist staff that covers a wide range of subjects). IMHO, Yahoo should embrace the content-providing rather than trying to drastically re-design their business. I don't go to yahoo on a desktop computer, but I think their news RSS feeds are pretty good for information on various things.