Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), Marissa Mayer and the Tough Times Telecommuting: Facebook Inc (FB), Google Inc (GOOG)

Microsoft

Microsoft is moving aggressively into search with the BING engine. Well and good, and God knows the company has the money and muscle to keep at it until something works. I’m a big fan of Microsoft’s new Surface tablet as I see the company trying to take the tablet for offices market for itself. That’s a gutsy move but Microsoft has always tried to sell itself as more mature than cool.

Unfortunately, the firm’s stock isn’t cool. It pays a high enough dividend, 3.36% yield, that some flatness of the shares is to be expected as value is siphoned off. Unfortunately, the trend has been down a bit over the last year. Still, the P/E is right at 15, and the company did post an operating margin of almost 30% last year. So invest in Microsoft if you think the Surface and BING are going to get some traction.

Facebook

One might not normally think of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) as a search engine but by God, it’s decided to take a stab at it. With the new ‘graph search’ the company is trying to even further give users no reason to ever leave the site. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to work. I think it’s one more attempt by Facebook to invent killer new technologies that people just don’t want. Then again, I’ve never thought much of the social media site.

What’s there to be said about Facebook’s shares that hasn’t been? They famously tanked on the IPO and haven’t fully recovered yet. I didn’t recommend them then and I don’t now. The smart money is on Facebook slowly withering away unless it figures out how to reverse it’s stock fortunes and start turning a real profit with some muscle in it. A P/E of 1,854.43 and an EPS of 0.01 argue against it.

There’s still a lot of pain out there for Mayer and Yahoo to get through. And, being a woman and mother, she’s going to take more grief that she would otherwise. Still, her moves to turn around Yahoo have, so far, been strong and gutsy. I’d truly like to see her succeed. But she doesn’t need the expectations that she’s a woman first and a CEO second to get in her way.

Good luck!

Follow Nate on Twitter: @natewooley

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The article Yahoo, Marissa Mayer and the Tough Times Telecommuting originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Nate Wooley.

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