Douglas Macmillan

Marissa Mayer, the Google Inc. executive brought in a year ago to restore Yahoo! Inc.’s (Nasdaq: YHOO) lost luster, has revamped products, shaken up management and presided over a 75 percent rally in the stock. Even so, Yahoo’s fifth chief executive officer in four years has struggled where it matters most: luring advertisers whose spending will put revenue back on a growth path. While Yahoo’s shares have soared in the past year on optimism over Mayer’s turnaround plan and the value of its Asian assets, analysts are bracing for another quarter of stagnant sales when the company reports earnings...

 Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist who led the first outside investment in Facebook Inc. (Nasdaq: FB), has created a new firm to back established technology startups. Mithril Capital Management LLC, based in San Francisco, has raised $402 million to invest in growth-stage companies that are transitioning from small startups into larger businesses, Ajay Royan, managing general partner, said in an interview. Thiel, 44, made his initial fortune as a co-founder of online payments pioneer PayPal Inc. before starting hedge fund Clarium Capital Management LLC. Mithril plans to make smaller investments than Clarium and larger bets than Founders Fund...

Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said that television is an area of “intense focus” for the company as it seeks to add products that can build on the success of Macs, iPhones and iPads. “This is an area of intense focus for us,” Cook said of TV in an on-stage interview yesterday at the D10 conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. “We’re going to keep pulling this string and see where it takes us.” Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, before he died last year, told his biographer that he had “finally cracked” how to build a...