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Yahoo Inc. chief executive Marissa Mayer deserves the plaudits she has won for plugging the holes in a sinking ship and plotting an aggressive course back toward growth.

Since taking the helm in July, 2012, the former Google executive has used acquisitions and a wave of new tools and content in an effort to remake the internet portal into a player in the burgeoning areas of social media, apps for mobile devices, video and even smart TV. Yahoo's share price doubled last year (although much of that was the result of its stake in the Chinese Internet company Alibaba) and its stock has been outperforming Facebook and other social media stars.

But the love may not last, especially among tech investors looking for rapid growth and strong cash flow gains protected from competition by a moat of continuing innovation. Yahoo seems more intent on becoming just another media company trying to protect a shrinking ad revenue stream in a crowded marketplace.

Yahoo's ambitious foray into original news – unveiled Tuesday with considerable fanfare and a dollop of celebrity star power (John Legend singing Here Comes the Sun) at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas – involves digital magazines that will depend on sponsored content. There will also be a channel called Yahoo Food, offering the usual melange of recipes, photos and culinary news. And the company will be offering a mobile news app called Yahoo News Digest, developed by teenage whiz Nick D'Aloisio, who sold his Summly news-summarizing phone app to Yahoo last year for $30-million (U.S.). The idea is to keep people coming back to Yahoo with twice-daily alerts of top news.

Gee, no one has thought of doing any of that stuff before.

All of this is designed to bolster Yahoo's shrinking share of the online advertising market. The company saw its piece of the U.S. digital ad pie drop to 5.9 per cent in 2013 from 6.8 per cent the year before and ceded second place to Facebook for the first time. Google remains on top. Weaker ad numbers have caused the company to miss its guidance for three consecutive quarters.

Ms. Mayer thinks this is just temporary. She should talk to some media publishers about that.

Better yet, if she wants to persuade more Yahooers to visit her news sites more often and soak up all that ad-sponsored content, she should consider acquiring some name media brands that could actually deliver the goods. If Jeff Bezos could acquire the Washington Post for what amounts to pocket change, surely Yahoo could pick off a few choice media titles with respected brands and strong followings, in what is not exactly a seller's market.

Forgive me for not getting that excited about the prospect of Ms. Mayer transforming Yahoo into another media player, even one that will show Katie Couric interviewing movers and shakers, and offer a tech magazine that will appeal to average readers, according to its boss, former New York Times columnist David Pogue. "With Yahoo Tech, we've got a language we're going to use that's called English," Mr. Pogue told the assembled tech trend spotters in Las Vegas.

Not exactly a strong buy signal for a market that has already seen so many media stars fade.

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