Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer touts 800 million users, defends logo

SAN FRANCISCO -- Yahoo has reached 800 million monthly active users, an increase of 20%, Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said Wednesday.

The growth is being driven by mobile usage, with 350 million monthly active users coming to Yahoo on smartphones and tablets, Mayer said during an onstage interview at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco.

The figures do not include Tumblr, which Yahoo bought for $1 billion.

Mayer said a Yahoo turnaround will still take three-plus years. But she said that her No. 1 focus has remained mobile and that the mobile team has grown by a factor of 10 since she took over as chief executive. Yahoo’s most popular products -- email, news and finance -- lend themselves to mobile, Mayer said.

Mayer also defended the company’s new (and not very popular) logo.

“I like the way the logo turned out, and I like the way that we did it,” Mayer said.

Rather than shell out millions and hire an outside company, Yahoo designed the logo in-house, she said.

“We did it in a way that came from a very authentic place,” Mayer said.

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