Say What? Yahoo's CEO Marissa Mayer Buys a Funeral Home

In case Google’s efforts to prevent death don’t pan out, Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer has a back-up plan: She bought a funeral parlor, according to news reports. Mayer has purchased Palo Alto's oldest funeral home, Roller & Hapgood & Tinney, a 114-year-old family-owned business, according to news reports which first appeared in local California news site Palo Alto Online. Records reveal Mayer may have paid $11.2 million for the site.

Since 1951, the family-owned funeral home has been at its current location at the corner of Addison and Middlefield streets in Palo Alto, Calif., an upscale neighborhood housing many of the Silicon Valley elites. Mayer reportedly lives a block from the property.

The funeral home owner, Paul Roller, says property values in Palo Alto have jumped so dramatically that it no longer makes economic sense to use the acreage for a funeral home, according to reports. The current median sales price of a home in Palo Alto, Calif. is more than $1.6 million, according to real-estate valuation company Trulia. The funeral home will close its doors on October 31.


Mayer took the helm at Yahoo a year ago in June and has made some dramatic changes in her short tenure so far. Some have been extremely well received, as with the revamp of Flickr, and some have been cause for controversy, as in her ban of telecommuting policy.