Marissa Mayer is in Washington — not exactly by her choice.
The former Yahoo CEO has been subpoenaed to appear in front of the Senate Commerce Committee to testify on cybersecurity breaches on Wednesday after declining several requests to appear voluntarily.
Congress thinks Mayer is well-equipped to discuss the topic since she was at the helm of Yahoo in 2013, when 3 billion of its accounts had their data compromised by a hack. She was also in charge the following year, when another hack hit 500 million accounts.
The subpoena, first reported by The Hill, was issued on Oct. 25, after legislators repeatedly attempted to get Mayer to appear. There’s now a squabble over her decision to testify, with Mayer agreeing to speak after a Verizon representative — the company that took over Yahoo — had agreed to talk as well. But as of Tuesday, the subpoena was still in effect.
Yahoo’s major breach didn’t come to light until 2016, shaving $350 million off Verizon’s buyout price for the internet stalwart. Verizon ended up paying about $4.5 billion altogether.
The push to have Mayer testify comes on the heels of Equifax’s massive hack, which left nearly half of the U.S. population vulnerable to having their personal information stolen.
You can watch Mayer, as well as Equifax execs, testify on Wednesday here.
6 Tech Giants Shaking Up News, From Jeff Bezos to Laurene Powell Jobs (Photos)
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.
Jeff Bezos – Washington Post
The Amazon founder purchased the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million in cash. President Trump has called the paper the “Amazon Washington Post.”
The Facebook co-founder purchased The New Republic in 2012, becoming executive chairman and publisher. However, he sold the venerable political magazine to Win McCormack in 2016, saying he "underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate."
The eBay founder is a well-known philanthropist who created First Look Media, a journalism venture behind The Intercept. Inspired by Edward Snowden's leaks. Omidyar teamed up with journalists Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras to launch the website “dedicated to the kind of reporting those disclosures required: fearless, adversarial journalism.”
The PayPal co-founder doesn’t own a news organization, but he makes this list because he essentially ended one -- Gawker -- proving once again the power of an angry billionaire. Thiel secretly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker Media because he was upset that the website once outed him as gay. Hogan won the defamation lawsuit against the site that sent its parent company into bankruptcy, and Gawker.com is no longer operating.
OK, so Facebook isn’t technically a news organization… yet. However, the company is preparing to launch its much-anticipated lineup of original content later this summer, and there are also signs that it's on the verge of becoming an even bigger media platform.
Campbell Brown, Head of News Partnerships at Facebook, confirmed last week it’s developing a subscription service for publishers willing to post articles directly to Facebook Instant Articles, rather than their native websites.
Tech is increasingly intertwined with news, for better or worse
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.
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