14 DAY TRIAL // Marissa Mayer is still only getting the hang of Yahoo and she hasn't actually done anything major just yet, except maybe deciding to keep all of the Alibaba billions, but she sure knows how to please the fans, i.e. the employees.
From her first days, she's been porting over some of the Google culture, like free food and other perks.
Now she's following through with an Oprah move, she's giving every employee (in 22 countries) a smartphone. Not just any smartphone, top of the line phones running either iOS, Android or Windows Phone.
Mayer plans to leave the choice of the phone to the employees and it's going to be a tough one since they can pick phones that aren't even out yet.
At the top of the list is the iPhone 5 that hasn't started shipping. If iOS is not your thing, there's a solid list of Android phones to choose from - the coveted Samsung Galaxy S3, the high-end HTC One X or the HTC EVO 4G LTE.
But if you're looking for something else entirely, the Windows Phone 8 flagship Nokia Lumia 920 is also available. Oh, and Yahoo will also be paying for the voice and data plans.
The move isn't just to please employees. As she explained in an internal memo, she wants everyone at Yahoo to think mobile and she needs them doing the same things as their users.
It's an obvious move, mobile is the future, or at least a big part of the future. That's where the battle is and even relative newcomers like Facebook are struggling with moving to the mobile web not to mention ancients like Yahoo.
Right now, Yahoo still uses BlackBerries as corporate phones, so you can imagine there'll be a lot of happy employees. Then again, there are still a few that cling on to their old phones. Not for long though as Yahoo is dropping IT support for the devices.