> Reduction in unsubstantiated nasty comments. A better conversation.

At the time you wrote this, there where zero nasty comments. Not even substantiated ones.

> Attempting to save a company that appeared at the time to be completely unsaveable.

Why do make that claim? This and similar is repeated here often: "A sinking ship", "Could not be saved even by Jesus", ... This is completely wrong! Either a company is beyond repair, then no respectable CEO would play the hero here. Or it shows potential for some kind of transformation process, where the company can find a new and successful purpose. In both cases the company is in a fragile state, because it is very hard to measure its true value. It's in a situation that is opposite to a very promising company: there is a chance that this company is underhyped. Yahoo was underhyped and underestimated, probably also by Marissa Meyer.

> Why not? What's different about that league compared to the one you and I play in?

Let me use an analogy here: When you and I are football players, then Marissa would have been our trainer. The problem is that the compensation plan made her also some kind of a Ronaldo.

You would be right about what to do with a struggling company if you had perfect information. However most of the time a board is not working with perfect information and must make a judgement call. Pretending after the fact that they could have known how this would play out is ignoring that. It's an easy decision to criticize in hindsight after the fact. Much harder to get right in the moment.