Ex-Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer admits the company should have bought Netflix instead of Tumblr as it ‘would have been a better acquisition’

• Ex-Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer shared three things she'd have done differently while at the company.
• Yahoo should have acquired Netflix or Hulu instead of blogging platform Tumblr, she told Tech Brew.
• "And either of those, with hindsight being 20/20, would have been a better acquisition," she said.

Marissa Mayer, former CEO of Yahoo, admitted she would have done three things differently during her time at the company if she was given the opportunity. 

In an interview with Tech Brew, Mayer reiterated that one of her regrets was hiring the wrong chief operating officer, Henrique De Castro, whom she fired after 15 months on the job.

Under her leadership, Yahoo acquired the social blogging platform Tumblr in May 2013 in a $1.1 billion all-cash deal. A source at the time told Insider Mayer was "very personally engaged in this deal," working late into numerous evenings.

But almost six years after exiting the company, Mayer told Tech Brew it may not have been the best move, especially as the company was considering at the same time whether it was possible to buy "Hulu or, ironically, Netflix."

"And I think Netflix was $4 billion and Hulu was at $1.3 billion at the time," she told the outlet. "And either of those, with hindsight being 20/20, would have been a better acquisition."

In 2016, Yahoo wrote down Tumblr's value by a total $712 million, which the company said was due to a combination of factors "including decreases in our projected Tumblr operating results and estimated future cash flows."

Mayer's biggest regret, however, was not making "the tax-free Alibaba spinoff to separate the assets of the company," she told Tech Brew. "If we had done that, it would have saved $10 billion for our shareholders or made them that money, whichever way you look at it, in taxes that were paid."

She added that it "would have allowed Yahoo to continue as an independent company, and it would have potentially had more success." 

Verizon acquired Yahoo in 2017 for $4.48 billion and was combined with AOL, prompting Mayer to resign. She received a $23 million pay package following her exit. 

Only after five years of ownership, Verizon sold Yahoo and AOL to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion and has been known solely as Yahoo since.