We know that Marissa Mayer understands what it's like to work for an ad-supported business; she helped build possibly the best ad machine the world has ever seen. This isn’t Scott Thompson, who seemed unfamiliar with how banners work, or Carol Bartz, who apparently thought that ad sales executives were optional. Even though Mayer’s a product/Alley/tech person at heart, she’s at least not unfamiliar with the concept of a media business.

That’s why Mayer’s early comments have me somewhat worried. Because the CEO she’s starting to sound like is Jerry Yang. Not the brilliant Jerry Yang who helped found the company in the 1990s, but the accidental CEO Yang of a few years ago, who after an exhaustive deliberation during his first 100 days back on the job, revealed to the world that Yahoo was indeed a portal.

Mayer told The New York Times

on Monday that Yahoo isn’t concerned with answering the never-ending "Is-Yahoo-a-media-or-tech-company" question. It’s not the right question. The most important thing is to "give the end user something valuable and delightful that makes them want to come to Yahoo every day.”

Uh oh. That’s sounds dangerously Yangish and vague. Ms. Mayer, they already do come every day. My mother-in-law is delighted to check Yahoo Mail every day. All we ever hear about from Yahoo officials is that there are 700 million people just like her.

Yahoo’s products, for all their problems, actually work fine. They’re maybe not beloved, but are certainly habitual.

Here’s another Mayer comment from this week, via Twitter: Love that on a Yahoo search for Skype you get a big "Download" button ‪#exactlywhatyouwant‬ http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF- …

Huh? Are you really going to start your tenure by making a case that Yahoo’s killing it in search?...(Read more)