Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is trying hard to return the company to the search business. According to a Re/Code report, the former Google executive is trying to bring Yahoo into direct competition with both Google and Microsoft by possibly moving the company into algorithmic search and search advertising again, with a couple of internal projects code named "Fast Break" and "Curveball".
As stated by people with more detailed knowledge of the plans, the Yahoo CEO is attempting to amalgamate it all internally in a master plan that's being called the "three S's" --- Stream, Shopping and Search. But because Yahoo is bound by a 10-year search and advertising partnership deal with Microsoft, the company will focus on mobile and contextual search rather than web and keyword search.
Contextual search provides information to users by looking at signals such as where they're located and what they're doing. Smartphone users are always beaming information from mobile devices, and Yahoo can derive benefit from that.
Many people at Yahoo emphasize that it was a big blunder to outsource the foundations of one of its two core businesses to a third party, and Marissa too hates this deal. In fact, she is trying to find out every possible way to get Yahoo out of this deal. As per the report, she even used legal means to slow down this deal, but failed.