Marissa Mayer, one of the top executives at Google, is the new CEO of Yahoo!, making her one of the most prominent women in Silicon Valley and corporate America
AFP/San Francisco

Yahoo! raided its archrival in its latest quest for resurrection, hiring key Google executive Marissa Mayer to start yesterday as the struggling Internet pioneer’s new chief.
Mayer - one of Google’s first employees - is now arguably the most prominent woman in Silicon Valley and a rare female CEO at one of America’s largest firms.
“I’m incredibly excited to start my new role at Yahoo! tomorrow,” Mayer said in a missive fired off at one-to-many text messaging service Twitter.
In the past year, Yahoo! has racked up five bosses, two of them interim chiefs who filled in after dismal ends to stints by Scott Thompson and Carol Bartz.
The hire of Mayer came as a surprise after many reports said interim chief Ross Levinsohn had a lock on the top job.
The appointment “signals a renewed focus on product innovation to drive user experience and advertising revenue,” Yahoo! said in a statement.
“I am honoured and delighted to lead Yahoo!, one of the Internet’s premier destinations for more than 700mn users,” Mayer said.
Danny Sullivan of the website Search Engine Land called 37-year-old Mayer a promising choice for Yahoo! chief.
“She is smart, she is driven, she knows the Internet space better than virtually anyone out there,” he said.
“If anyone has a shot at doing something good with Yahoo! she is one of the best picks... She took Google as a search engine to this huge success that it has. She is very focused on details, very meticulous.”
Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape and head of a venture capital firm, said the news is “great for the Valley” and “it’s a big statement on Yahoo!’s part of go with a product-centric person.”
“It can make Yahoo! a product innovator again,” he told a tech conference organised by Fortune magazine in Aspen, Colorado. “There have been very few turnarounds in tech, until Apple proved you could do it.”
At Google, Mayer was responsible for local and geographical products including Google Maps, Google Earth, Zagat, Street View, and local search for desktop and mobile.
“She’s a great product person, very innovative and a real perfectionist who always wants the best for users,” Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt said of Mayer.
“Yahoo! has made a good choice and I am personally very excited to see another woman become CEO of a technology company.”
She joined Google in 1999 as its 20th employee and is credited with a decade of leading many of Google’s most recognisable products, including its flagship search product and iconic homepage.