Mayer plans to cut Yahoo!’s apps and strengthen Facebook alliance

It seems Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is getting down to business with some serious decisions. Mayer announced in an investor conference hosted by the Goldman Sachs Group that the company needs to streamline its mobile offering by cutting its apps from about 60 to 12, reports AllThingsD.

“Ultimately, you don’t want to trouble users by making them download too many apps, but many apps are single-use,” said Mayer.

The CEO is searching for ways to innovate at the company and has expressed that Yahoo needs to get more aggressive and smart about its mobile play.

“How many people at least once a day mark an email as unread on their phone, just so they can go back later and read it on their PC?” Mayer said. “There’s a clear opportunity for innovation. The tool just doesn’t work that well right now. These are the types of things we’re thinking about.”

One of Yahoo!’s biggest challenges is gaining search market share over rival Google. Ten years ago the company entered a deal with Microsoft to improve that, but according to Mayer the alliance isn’t yielding fruitful results by way of gaining market share.

“One of the points of the alliance is that we collectively want to grow share rather than just trading share with each other,” said the CEO. “We need to see monetization working better because we know that it can and we’ve seen other competitors in the space illustrate how well it can work.”

As part of Mayer’s plans to turn the ailing internet giant around, she is hoping to get users to spend more time on its top sites so as to increase ad sales. Recently the company inked a deal with Google for more contextual advertising on Yahoo’s platforms.

“I’m not confused. Our biggest business problem right now is impressions. Basically can we grow impressions, can we get growth happening here,” Mayer said.

Speaking of Google, Mayer’s decision to cut the number of apps has a familiar ring to it. Something her former boss said about “more wood behind fewer arrows” springs to mind.

Mayer also thinks that strengthening ties with Facebook will help set the company on a course for success with a push towards social.

“A lot of the strengths of Facebook are available to Yahoo users,” she said.

Mayer’s first act as CEO was the revamping Flickr, the company’s photo sharing site.

“One of the things that people really want to do is share their interests with their friends,” she said. “We need to have sharing built as a fundamental component.”

Social is a big deal for most internet companies and it is currently dominated by Facebook. A strengthened alliance with the social network could help bolster Yahoo!’s presence.