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Yahoo's Bad Week Ends With An Apology From Marissa Mayer

'We Are Very Sorry'
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Marissa Mayer, president and chief executive officer of Yahoo! Inc., watches a demonstration during the DreamForce Conference in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2013. Yahoo boosted its stock-buyback plan by $5 billion, returning more cash to shareholders as Mayer seeks to revive growth at the largest U.S. Internet portal. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Marissa Mayer, president and chief executive officer of Yahoo! Inc., watches a demonstration during the DreamForce Conference in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2013. Yahoo boosted its stock-buyback plan by $5 billion, returning more cash to shareholders as Mayer seeks to revive growth at the largest U.S. Internet portal. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Yahoo and CEO Marissa Mayer have had a no good, very bad week.

Mayer acknowledged as much on Friday night in a post on her Tumblr, where she wrote that she and the company were "very sorry" for the prolonged Yahoo Mail outages that left people unable to access their email for several days this week.

"This has been a very frustrating week for our users and we are very sorry," Mayer wrote. "We really let you down this week. We can, and we will, do better in the future."

Mayer wrote that the problem began on Monday because of hardware issues with one of Yahoo Mail's servers. The server powered email for about 1 percent of Yahoo Mail's users, who Mayer said were the only ones affected by the outage. Yahoo Mail has about 289 million monthly users worldwide, second only to Gmail at 304 million, according to comScore.

Messages sent to problematic accounts during this time were not delivered, but held in a queue. Users were very vocal on social media while the "scheduled maintenance" dragged on for several days. The problem was completely fixed by Friday.

Yahoo faced backlash in October also after a massive redesign for Yahoo Mail left some confused, missing emails and longing for some lost features such as tabs.

Flickr, the photo sharing service that Yahoo owns, also struggled with downtime this week.

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Before You Go

1
Advice To Job Hunting Women
"Find something you're passionate about and just love. Passion is really gender-neutralizing," Marissa Mayer said on Martha Stewart's "Women with Vision" television series in 2011.
2
The Pie 'Isn't Big Enough'
"Right now is a great time to be a woman in tech, but there's not enough women in tech," Mayer told a CES2012 panel hosted by CNET. "[I] worry a lot of times the conversation gets really focused on what percentage of the pie is women. And the truth is, the pie isn't big enough. We're not producing enough computer scientist. We're not producing enough product designers. We need a lot more people to keep up with all of these gadgets, all of this technology, all these possibilities."Mayer also commented on the stereotypical culture within the tech world: "There's all kinds of different women who do this. You can wear ruffles, you can be a jock, and you still be a great computer scientist or a great technologist, or a great product designer."
3
Tangible Technology
"There's just huge growth and opportunity. [T]he fact that the technology is now so tangible in our everyday lives, I think, will inspire a lot more women to go into technology -- and I'm really heartened by that," Mayer said for the MAKERS "Women in Tech" interview series in 2012.
4
Internet Empowered
"I consider myself incredibly lucky to be present in a moment in time when this wonderful and powerful medium, the internet, is empowering geeks -- and especially female geeks -- to express and pursue their passions," Meyer said in a 2012 acceptance speech at the Celebrating Change gala. She had just won the International Museum of Women's first-ever Innovator Award.
5
Geekin' Out
"People ask me all the time, 'What is it like to be a woman at Google?' I'm not a women at Google; I'm a geek at Google. And being a geek is just great," she said in an interview for CNN's "Leading Women" series in 2012.
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