(CNN) -- In the wake of Google alum Marissa Mayer's surprise hiring as CEO, variations of the same question are popping up again and again: What can be done to turn once-mighty Yahoo around? In the salad days of the late '90s and early 2000s, Yahoo was the very face of the Internet for many people. Its search engine was the Web's most-used, letting the company demand top dollars for advertising. As a Web portal, it helped hundreds of million of people take their first tentative steps online. Opinion: What signal is Marissa Mayer giving to Yahoo employees? But along came a company called Google, whose algorithm-based search feature came to dominate the market quickly and whose e-mail service, while not supplanting Yahoo's, played a part in stripping away the company's fading sheen of Internet chic.
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Analysts break down what Yahoo needs to do to turn its business around
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The key is defining what Yahoo is and stripping away what it's not
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Analysts say the company needs more innovation, which has been lacking
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Google alum Marissa Mayer has been named Yahoo's new CEO
He said innovation is the key for @placeholder, a company that, in the eyes of many, has remained stagnant while rivals better anticipated such digital trends as the growth of social media and mobile networking.