Marissa Mayer Yahoo’s New CEO
Marissa Mayer has started work at Yahoo! as CEO and Member of the Board of Directors.
Her appointment is expected to spice things up at Yahoo, once a top internet and media firm. She is expected to champion for new products and advance its web technology. This might revive Yahoo’s leading properties like Yahoo! Mail ,Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Sports and Yahoo! Mobile
On accepting her appointment Mayer said, “I am honored and delighted to lead Yahoo!, one of the internet’s premier destinations for more than 700 million users. I look forward to working with the Company’s dedicated employees to bring innovative products, content, and personalized experiences to users and advertisers all around the world.”
She added,”Yahoo!’s products will continue to enhance our partnerships with advertisers, technology and media companies, while inspiring and delighting our users. There is a lot to do and I can’t wait to get started”.
Qualifications
Marissa Mayer has a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University, she specialized in artificial intelligence in both her degrees and has several patents in artificial intelligence and interface design credited to her.
She also taught computer programming while still at Stanford to more than 3000 students and in 2008, she was given an honorary doctorate in engineering by the Illinois Institute of Technology.
13 plus years of product development
Before her appointment to Yahoo, the 37 year old was the number 20 employee at Google where she was Vice President of Local, Maps, and Location Services. Mayer oversaw product management, engineering, design and strategy for the company’s suite of local and geographical products, including Google Maps, Google Earth, Zagat, Street View, and local search, for desktop and mobile.
At Google she also curated the Google Doodle program used during celebrations worldwide. She has been at Google for 13 years and has been instrumental in her years as an engineer, designer, product manager, and executive, and in charge of many new products at the giant search engine. she was responsible for Google search success making it the leading service at the company for more than a decade.
She also played a central role in the development of Gmail and Google News.
The inventor joined the firm in 1999 as the first female engineer and also serves on the board of directors of Wal-Mart Stores since April and various non-profits like the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Ballet, and the New York City Ballet.
Fred Amoroso, Chairman of the Board of Directors said “The Board of Directors unanimously agreed that Marissa’s unparalleled track record in technology, design, and product execution makes her the right leader for Yahoo! at this time of enormous opportunity.”
David Filo Yahoo! Co-Founder who expects Mayer to enhance Yahoo’s product offerings for their over 700 million unique monthly visitors said; “Marissa is a well-known, visionary leader in user experience and product design and one of Silicon Valley’s most exciting strategists in technology development”.
Unexpected Appointment
Her appointment was a little unexpected as the deputy Ross Levinsohn had in his few months forged media partnerships to bring in advertisers, he had ended a patent dispute with Facebook and turned it into a partnership and had ended a fractious episode in Yahoo’s history by sealing a deal to sell as much as half of its stake in China’s Alibaba, netting some $7.1 billion.
Nevertheless it’s too early to judge if the appointment of the firm’s third CEO in a year is wrong as the two might work just as well to build the firm into the media and internet giant it was.
This will be a time for the firm to get down to business after its CEO controversies. The firm in May had Scott Thompson resign due to allegations over his academic credentials. Thompson had worked as CEO less than six months. In September last year Carol Bartz was quickly fired on claims after what was said to be a failure to magically turn around the firm’s fortunes.
The appointment is not the only good news for the celebrity geek, she and her husband Zachary Bogue are expecting a baby!
