Yahoo! shocked its observers and Wall Street today by naming Marissa Mayer, longtime Google executive, as chief executive of the teetering Silicon Valley Web portal.
Mayer, 37, was one of the first employees of Google, the company that first rode to prominence on Yahoo’s coattails as its search provider—and then quickly surpassed it. She ran Google’s search group for years and most recently has led the location and local division; she’s also always been one of the company’s best spokespeople. But over the past year she never seemed to find a place on CEO Larry Page’s senior leadership team.
Mayer now faces an almost impossible task. She must restore Yahoo’s ability to innovate, repair its image with advertisers and customers, and inject some energy into the depleted work force, which has been bruised and battered by layoffs and a cratering stock price. And while she’s doing all that, she’ll have to manage restless shareholders such as Daniel Loeb, who recently joined the board and controls two other seats as well, and fend off Yahoo-obsessed bloggers who seem to have a direct pipeline into the Yahoo boardroom.
The biggest problem at Yahoo remains existential—what is Yahoo’s mission, anyway? Often nothing seems as trivial and artificial as a corporate mission statement, but such exercises do help clarify the minds of the troops and unify them behind a common goal. Google’s mission is “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Amazon is to “build a place where people can come to find and discovery anything they might want to buy online.” Apple is to create the best-designed, best-in-class PCs and digital media devices in the world.Yahoo’s mission statement, according to its website, is to “create deeply personal digital experiences” and to connect users to what matters most to them. The Internet does that very well all by itself, thank you, and social media such as Facebook and Twitter have also encroached on that vague territory.
But Mayer has something most of her predecessors have lacked—she’s a trained engineer, with a masters degree in computer science from Stanford. Ross Levinsohn, the interim CEO and apparent frontrunner for the job, was a media guy who hailed from News Corp. As Yahoo’s rivals have amply demonstrated, having technical knowledge and an innovative vision are the qualities that make for successful leadership in the rapidly changing world of the Internet. To the extent that it’s even possible to right the good ship Yahoo anymore, the Yahoo board may have finally gotten it right.
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Donna e incinta: ecco il nuovo ad di Yahoo!
Marissa Mayer viene da Google ed è la più giovane top manager di una società web. Il board californiano l'ha nominata all'unanimità nonostante sapesse della gravidanza.
Domani Yahoo pubblicherà i risultati di bilancio del secondo trimestre, ma i riflettori saranno tutti puntati sul nuovo amministratore delegato. La ricerca è finita, il colosso di Internet ha scelto: Marissa Mayer, 37 anni e (ora ex) dirigente di Google, è chiamata a raccogliere un'eredità difficile e a risollevare le sorti di una società in affanno. Mayer dovrà ridare slancio alla crescita di Yahoo, impresa non riuscita ai suoi predecessori. Mayer era uno dei massimi dirigenti di Google dove era responsabile di alcuni prodotti come Google Maps, Google Earth, Zagat e Street View. C'è lei anche dietro i celebri Doodle. La giovanissima top manager è l'impiegata numero 20 di Mountain View, prima donna ingegnere in Google e tra le più in vista e potenti della Silicon Valley.
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