Google veteran Marissa Mayer named Yahoo CEO

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,240   +192
Staff member

Yahoo has announced that one of the top executives from Google is taking over as their new CEO. Marissa Mayer resigned from her position at Google via telephone on Monday and will join Yahoo on Tuesday, ending her 13 year career with the search giant. She will join a short list of women holding top spots at their respective companies, most notably Meg Whitman of HP and Virginia Rometty at IBM.

Mayer, who was Google’s twentieth employee and their first female engineer, has been described as one of the few public faces of the company. She got her start as a computer programmer but eventually worked her way up the corporate ladder, most recently being put in charge of Google’s location and local services division that includes Google Maps. Mayer is responsible for the look and feel of several key products for the search giant including the plain white Google search homepage, Google News, Gmail and Google Images.

The opportunity at Yahoo will allow Mayer to “step out on her own and claim a bigger stage,” as the NY Times puts it. The publication also notes that this won’t be her first time venturing away from Google. In April, she joined the board at Wal-Mart, becoming one of four women to hold a seat on the 16-person board.

Some media outlets are describing the decision as a bit of a surprise as many expected interim Yahoo CEO Ross Levinsohn to get the nod. Levinsohn took following Scott Thompson's resignation in May after it was revealed that he had lied about his educational background on his resume.

Permalink to story.

 
Guess it just depends on your perspective. It could be an awesome move if she actually pulls things together. Imagine having that on your resume heh. It's an opportunity and at the very worst from what I can see, she'll fail to revive a company most people already consider dead.
 
Yup, plus she'll no doubt pick up an insane paycheck (like she doesn't already do well enough with Google). I just haven't seen a whole lot of success in the "two steps forward, one step backward" career approach, especially in the hi-tech industry. Going to Yahoo! would be almost like taking over Blackberry RIM at this stage.

At any rate, will be interesting to see how well she does.
 
"Marissa Mayer resigned from her position at Google via telephone on Monday"

What a nice way to leave the company who made you...
 
Sweet, maybe Yahoo will have a little hope of recovery with a Google executive running it. She obviously isn't dumb if she's gotten this far though. I have a feeling she has a decent plan to turn it around for Yahoo.
 
What a nice way to leave the company who made you...
Don't forget that she also helped make that company. This is definitely a surprising move and the first thing out of my mouth was "Bad move!" but if you think about what Matthew said this could really be big for her. Also, it never hurts to see a really techie female doing it big!
 
Yahoo! is still a good company.... and think it's not a bad decision..... :) especially her pay would be premium ^_^
 
Mayer already impressed me with her work at Google, so I hope she can turn a venerable company like Yahoo! around.
 
What a nice way to leave the company who made you...
Don't forget that she also helped make that company. This is definitely a surprising move and the first thing out of my mouth was "Bad move!" but if you think about what Matthew said this could really be big for her. Also, it never hurts to see a really techie female doing it big!

Well said. And at that level, especially when you are going to a competitor, you don't get to give a 2-week notice so that you can say goodbye to your buddies and conveniently copy a few GB of files onto your thumbdrive. Once she decided on that, Google would probably not even let her back into her office. No hard feelings.
 
Also, it never hurts to see a really techie female doing it big!
It never It never hurts to see her :D

I too was surprised at this announcement though. In the big scheme of things, she really doesn't have much to lose here. If Yahoo dies, she just moves on or retires, it isn't like she's hurting for money.
 
Gosh, now two smart ladies in the tech world, Kim Komando:

kim.jpg


& Marissa Mayer

photo.jpg
 
I'm kind of surprised there isn't some sort of non-compete nonsense to worry about. I guess that isn't Google's perceived style, but Google *is* a business nonetheless, so just surprising.

Mayer has been near the top of the food chain at Google since its early days.. I bet she has tremendous knowledge of Google's internal affairs, products and so forth.
 
I'm kind of surprised there isn't some sort of non-compete nonsense to worry about. I guess that isn't Google's perceived style, but Google *is* a business nonetheless, so just surprising.

Mayer has been near the top of the food chain at Google since its early days.. I bet she has tremendous knowledge of Google's internal affairs, products and so forth.
Good point.

And she is also Pregnant

Good pay, too, I guess http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/19/technology/yahoo-ceo-pay/index.htm?hpt=hp_t2
 
Back