The least surprising breaking news of the year

Groupon is entering a new era.

CNNMoney is reporting that CEO Andrew Mason is out at the company that he founded.

I wrote in November that it was likely that Mason was going to get fired. He survived that quarterly earnings period, but couldn't survive the most recent results.

It's not much of a surprise because of two things. First, they should have taken Google's offer to buyout for some $6 billion. Upon passing on that, they needed to diversify and earn revenue from that diversification fast.

Groupon started to diversify, including such things as a new credit card processing service (a highly watered down market as it is), but it was basically too little, too late.

So where does the company go from here? They will name an interim CEO, but from there the company has a few options.

They are now a major target for a takeover at a huge discount to what Google offered. They may also keep trying to further diversify their offerings and basically 'restart' the company. Third, they may end up going private.

It's a bit too early to say which way the company will go, but we will likely know by the end of the year.

Marissa Mayer is out of her league

Marissa Mayer has a problem. A big problem.

She is out of her league.

I get that Yahoo! has had a lot of problems for quite a long time. But she is going about fixing things in all the wrong ways.

First, she took a two-week maternity leave. While that may be all she needs, she is sending a message to her employees that they better not ask for a lengthy maternity leave. Hopefully no employees have pregnancy complications that require significant time off.

In addition, she doesn't respect anyone's time but her own. It doesn't matter if you are the guy working in the mail room or the CEO. If you can't show up to things on time, it's time to reassess what you are doing. Nobody is going to respect her. It's going to be impossible to get anything done otherwise.

Then she showed off the new homepage on Today, while Yahoo! is a major partner of Good Morning America. Plain and simple, there was a lack of thought to that decision and shows out out of touch Meyer is with what is going on with who the company deals with.

Now, she is not allowing anyone to work remotely. I get that people slack off when they work from home. Guess what? People slack off when they work in the office too. In addition, if people aren't getting work done at home, they aren't being managed properly. Get rid of the problem managers. Don't punish all of those that work remotely because managers don't manage.

While Mayer is making missteps, it is possible she will be able to right the sinking ship that is Yahoo! However, she is showing a trend that shows she is out of touch, disrespectful and not able to make decisions that address the actual problem. She is certainly not someone that I would want to work for, and I am sure there are many people at Yahoo! who are thinking the same.