Acquisitions are a horrible way to help redefine a company culture, the size of the companies Yahoo has acquired barely number 10 employees or more. With its eight acquisitions the new talent barely registers in a culture defined by 11,000 employees around the world.

But it does shape the perception of the company, not with consumers, but with the engineers that are important to the future of Yahoo’s growth. For Yahoo the growth they need won’t come from the acquisitions of a small consumer startup for $10M but from a great leap in technical innovation that will take years to build or cost significantly more than the small deals they are making now.

Yahoo tried to buy cool in 2005 with the acquisition of “delicious”, the social bookmarking company which was later sold off and Flickr. Flickr is considered to have been a huge missed opportunity for Yahoo with the growth of services like Instagram and photo sharing on Facebook. None of the small consumer services acquired during the acquisition period of 2005 have made a significant impact to Yahoo’s! bottom line.

The previous run of acquisitions were aimed at finding services that could succeed on their own, making Yahoo a portal of desperate services that users might be interested in. But the recent acquisitions appear to be aimed at adding slight improvements to services that Yahoo already has.

Now when Yahoo acquires a company it immediately starts integrating the service into Yahoo’s product line up. Unlike the previous acquisitions most of the services that Yahoo acquires now haven’t gained strong consumer momentum or market awareness.

The most controversial deal Mayer has made was Summly, a mobile startup that creates automatic 350 word summary of articles. Summly was founded by a 17 year old and received less than $2M in seed funding. Yahoo paid $30M for it. While some questioned why Yahoo would pay so much for a company with such a young founder, only 7 employees and minor consumer traction, the message from Mayer was clear, mobile is important, news is critical for Yahoo and she isn’t afraid to pay for the technology gaps missing in Yahoo’s current lineup. Four weeks after the acquisition the technology was already integrated into Yahoo’s products.

But small acquisitions of startups with no revenue and small teams aren’t going to make a significant impact at a company with a market capitalization of $29B. These acquisitions and integrations serve to maintain the company’s market cap by adding new services that will keep users engaged.

Yahoo also has an image problem. Flickr and Delicious were popular companies in their time and their founders are extremely well connected and vocal members of the startup community. Their experiences with Yahoo after being acquired were horrible and the founders of both left immediately after their contractual obligations to Yahoo ended, frustrated by the bureaucratic culture of the company.

Successfully bringing in new startups into the Mayer culture is a chance for her to remove the negative perception that Yahoo as a place where startups go to die and engineers are undervalued. Doing this will make it much easier for Yahoo to compete with Google and Facebook for larger acquisitions, market shifting acquisitions that are going to be necessary to truly impact Yahoo’s business.

Google’s major acquisitions like Doubleclick, Youtube or ITA software which powers most of the travel industry are the type that will really make a difference for Yahoo.

Mayer seems to be thinking along the same line too. She unsuccessfully tried to acquire french video company DailyMotion and the rumour is that she is planning to make a play for Hulu. Both are the type of deals that will make significant impacts into the companies market cap if the integration is done well. We should expect these type of deals from Yahoo very soon.

I give her 24 months to make a big deal. Considering that after the acquisition Mayers won’t have much more time to show how the deal adds to the bottom line. Unlike Google and Facebook Meyers is still a hired CEO with very strong outside shareholders who have a short term outlook.

In the short term one of the many problems Mayers will have to deal with is improving the culture of Yahoo. If they can’t successfully embrace and integrate a $30M acquisition, a $1B acquisition will be a disaster surely to result in her ouster. Consider these smaller deals practice runs for the major deal she is hunting for that will be the anchor to her legacy as a turnaround specialist. I wish her the best of luck. The valley loves an underdog, and she has a lot of work ahead of her. Hopefully her shareholders will give her the time she needs to make it happen.

This article was originally published in Sankei on 5/13/2013 http://www.sankeibiz.jp/business/news/130513/bsj1305130500001-n1.htm

Yahoo buying cool again published on Tokyo Times

The six-day festival focused on Tibetan traditions, food, costume and way of life. Many handmade objects from Norbulingka Institute, which represent Tibetan culture and age-old Tibetan craftsmanship, were displayed for sale, while Tibetans debated the local culture and the country’s situation through interactive sessions during the festival, according to the international press.

Cham, a traditional Tibetan Buddhist opera, was performed by monks from Tashi Lhunpo monastery, while Thangka paintings were displayed in association with the Norblingka Institute of Dharamshala.

Ven. Eiji Okamoto, the Chief Abbot of the Gokokuji Temple said that “he felt glad to help the Tibetan people’ and that the Gokokuji temple ” shared a special relationship with the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama due to the past visits by His Holiness to the temple.”

His Holiness the Dalai Lama had visited the temple in 2011 to conduct prayers after the violent earthquake and tsunami hit Japan that year.

Tibet festival draws over 80,000 people in Japan published on Tokyo Times

Hashimoto’s statement comes after he said the so-called “comfort women” – who were forced to provide sexual favors for the Japanese soldiers during World War II – were “necessary” for keeping soldiers in line.

“Regardless of whether it is war-time or not, a view to use women as a tool [to let out sexual frustration] is intolerable,” said Masako Ishimine, a senior member of a local women’s body, according to the international press.

“Does he mean women should simply take it because men work hard?”

Up to 200,000 women from Korea, China, the Philippines and elsewhere were forcibly taken into brothels catering to the Japanese military in territories occupied by Japan during WWII, according to most of the historians.

Shoko Toguchi, a senior member of a women’s rights group, said Mr Hashimoto “lacked the sense of human rights and was not able to feel the pain of Okinawa’s people”.

Okinawa women demand Hashimoto an apology published on Tokyo Times

Five people were seriously hurt, police spokesman Keshav Adhikari said.

Due to a braking failure, the plane crashed into the Kali Gandaki river in the Annapurna mountain range in Nepal’s northwest.

“At 8:30 am (0245 GMT), the plane was landing at Jomsom airport in Mustang district when its brakes failed. Half of the aircraft’s body is in the water and the other half is on the river bank,” Adhikari said, according to the international press.

“Five people, including a pilot, have been seriously injured. They are being airlifted to Pokhara for further treatment,” he said, referring to the town where the plane was initially heading to.

Inside the plane there were three crew members and 18 passengers. Eight of the passengers were Japanese tourists en route to Jomsom, an airport town near Muktinath, a sacred Buddhist pilgrimage site at the foot of the Thorong La Himalayan mountain pass. The other 10 people were Nepalese.

Nepal plane crashes, leaves 21 people hurt, including 8 Japanese published on Tokyo Times

The dog-statues have watched the broadcasting tower for more than 50 years. Among the statues there are the ones of Taro and Jiro, the only dogs that survived after being left behind when the Japanese team returned home in February 1958, according to Kyodo news agency.

The statues will be moved from the tower to the National Institute of Polar Research in Tokyo. The move was necessary in order for an afforestation project to be made on the tower grounds.

The 15 sled dogs were left at the Japanese base while the first team was about to be replaced by a second one which was on its way. However, bad weather prevented the second team from reaching the base and retrieving the dogs.

After one year, a third expedition team arrived at the base and found two dogs that were still alive.

The survival of the dogs was widely reported in the media. Movies, TV dramas and an animated series were made based on the story.

Historical dog statues to be removed from Tokyo Tower published on Tokyo Times

Several days ago, Hashimoto said that recruiting women to provide sexual service to the Japanese military force in World War II was “necessary to maintain discipline” and that the so-called “comfort women” were “needed to provide rest to a group of brave soldiers who were exalted in the line of fire.”

The mayor asked, “Why is the Japanese ‘comfort women’ system only blamed? Other countries had similar schemes at the time.” Hashimoto denied that the Japanese army abducted women and forced them into sexual slavery by assaulting and threatening them, Kyodo news agency reports.

According to Hashimoto, Europe and the United States call Japan a “nation of rapists” due to “campaigns by South Korea and other nations.”

A South Korean government official slammed Hashimoto’s remarks on “comfort women,” saying they showed a “serious lack of recognition of history and the need to respect women’s human rights,” according to Yonhap News Agency.

Hashimoto’s remarks outraged other opposition parties in Japan.

After the latter remarks, Hashimoto told reporters on Wednesday he simply stated a fact that people at the time had that kind of view.

The comfort women system is a practice that “should not exist,” said Hashimoto, who co-heads the opposition Japan Restoration Party.

Hashimoto clarifies statement on “comfort women” after strong reactions published on Tokyo Times

About 10 million people visited the 634-meter tower and the mall, called Tokyo Solamachi in just two months since they were opened. The number continued to grow during the following months, according to Tobu Tower Skytree Co., an affiliate of the tower’s operator Tobu Railway Co.

The number of visitors expected for the first year – 44 million people – was eclipsed, the operator said.

Visitors to the tower reached 5.54 million by March 31. The one-year total for the tower is currently projected at 6.4 million, up from the initial estimate of 5.4 million, Tobu Railway added, according to Kyodo news agency.

Tokyo Skytree is a broadcasting and observation tower, as well as a restaurant. It became the tallest building in Japan in 2010 and the second tallest structure in the world after the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai (829.8 meters).

Japan’s population chose the tower’s official name during a nationwide vote in 2008. The name received around 33,000 votes (30 percent) out of 110,000 cast, with the second most popular name being “Tokyo Edo Tower”.

Tokyo Skytree tops 50 million visitors before anniversary published on Tokyo Times

The binoculars will be launched in Japan on June 21, as well as in the United States, Asia and Europe in the same month, Kyodo says. Two models of binoculars will be launched, with the new version being smaller, lighter, dust-resistant and weatherproof compared to the first generation model, which was launched in 2011.

The new product is equipped with autofocus functions, has a wide zoom magnification range from 0.8x to 25x and can record both 2-D and 3-D images, even when the light is low. The binoculars can also record audio along with the video in stereo format, according to Sony.

Users can connect the binoculars to a TV using a HDMI output for viewing of images and accessory cable, the international press reports. The gadget is powered by a rechargeable battery that allows three hours of 2-D recording.

The binoculars will be available in stores at a price of Y170,000 (about $1,700).

Sony to release 2nd generation of digital-recording binoculars published on Tokyo Times

Mitsubishi Materials (Shanghai) Corp received on Tuesday a document requesting compensation of 370 million Yuan (about $60 million) for the forced workers that Japan used during World War II.

“The executive promised to keep and hand over the document to Mitsubishi’s headquarters in Japan after half an hour’s dispute, with the presence of some Chinese and Japanese media,” said Kang Jian, a lawyer for the alliance groups.

Each of the 3,765 Chinese laborers asked for 100,000 Yuan, according to the document received by Mitsubishi. The request included 711 people who died in Japan.

Laborers also asked the company for apologies, which Mitsubishi has not stated so far, according to the international press.

In 2009, Mitsubishi was sued by the Chinese forced laborers, but they lost in the lawsuit. However, the court stated that the Japanese government and companies were wrong to enslave Chinese workers.

This statement eased the procedure of initiating negotiations outside judicial action, Kang thinks.

“The court suggested the government and companies provide compensation to the laborers, and we will never give up,” she said.

WW2 Chinese workers ask Mitsubishi $60 mil. compensation published on Tokyo Times

Michio Yasuda, an executive director at ORENO Corporation, which owns and runs 18 restaurants in Tokyo, hopes New Yorkers will receive well the idea of having a refined meal while standing.

“Only a tiny portion of people can afford to eat at Michelin starred restaurants but those who earn a modest income should also be able to try high quality food,” said Yasuda, according to the international press.

In Japan, the standing restaurants’ menus include dishes such as beef tournedos with foie gras. The price of a meal is around Y4,000 ($47,50), the equivalent of having some drinks and snacks at a regular Japanese pub.

Now, ORENO Corporation plans to open a standing, gourmet Japanese restaurant in New York.

“Japanese food at a top-rated place in New York is so expensive. We want to completely change that,” said Hiroshi Shimada, a chef who set up a gourmet standing Japanese restaurant in the Ginza after leaving the Michelin three-starred Japanese restaurant Azabu Yukimura.

Some of the dishes will probably be modified according to the American tastes, Shimada said.

“For example, we might add just a tiny bit of butter to our ‘dashi’ soup stock. Or take Japanese simmered dishes like ‘niku jaga’ – meat with potatoes – and serve them with bread, like a stew,” he added.

New York to adopt Japanese standing restaurants published on Tokyo Times