Marissa Mayer named new Yahoo CEO

Google exec Marissa Mayer has been named the new CEO of troubled web giant Yahoo!. "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," Mayer said in a press release, per Business Insider. From the New York Times' DealBook, which broke the news: The appointment of Ms. Mayer, who was employee No. 20 at Google and was one of the few public faces of the company, is considered a surprising coup for Yahoo, which has struggled in recent years to attract top flight talent in its battle with competitors like Google and Facebook. Google's first female engineer, Mayer will now serve as Yahoo's President and CEO and will sit on the board of directors, according to Yahoo's official press release. She had previously been the vice president of Google's local, maps and location services and was responsible for the look and feel of many widely used Google products, most notably the Google home page. "I wanted to work at Google because the smartest people were there," Mayer told The Huffington Post's Bianca Bosker last July. "And I wanted to work at Google because I felt utterly unprepared to work at a search engine." Many had expected Yahoo to appoint interim CEO Ross Levinsohn to Mayer's position. Levinsohn had stepped in after the brief stint of Scott Thompson, Yahoo chief from January until May. Tompson, whose time with Yahoo ended abruptly during a scandal over discrepancies on his resume, had been appointed after Yahoo's ouster of Carol Bartz, CEO from January 2009 through September 2011. Yahoo's announcement seems also to have come as a surprise to some Google employees. The Next Web points to a tweet posted by Google X software engineer Stephen Lau. "What the. I don't even," wrote an apparently perplexed Lau, in reference to the Times story about the Mayer's new position. Later on Monday evening, Mayer tweeted that she's "excited" about her new gig, which she said will begin on Tuesday. text he