Marissa Mayer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:
In a surprise move widely viewed as a coup, struggling Yahoo has just appointed Marissa Mayer, a highly visible longtime executive at Google, to be its new chief executive. The appointment, initially announced through a New York Times story, now has been announced officially.
Mayer, who for years ran Google’s search products after joining as employee No. 20 13 years ago, more recently had moved to head its local business efforts. But last year, Jeff Huber was appointed senior VP of local and commerce, seemingly a management level above Mayer, though Google tried to say the move wasn’t a demotion.
Mayer, 37, wasn’t mentioned as a possible Yahoo CEO successor to Scott Thompson, ousted in May after revelations about a falsified resume. Instead, it was becoming more likely that interim CEO Ross Levinsohn would step up to the permanent post, if any CEO job at Yahoo, which has run through multiple CEOs in recent years, can be said to be permanent. On the other hand, delays in the decision indicated the board wasn’t going with the seemingly easy choice.
In an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times’ Dealbook column, Mayer said that despite “an amazing time at Google” for the last 13 years, the decision to take the top spot at Yahoo was “relatively easy” because it’s “one of the best brands on the Internet.”
The job will be a big challenge for Mayer, as it would be for anyone, because Yahoo has been losing ground on virtually every measure, with sales flat or down for years. What’s more, there has been a steady exodus of talent as Yahoo changed direction and leadership multiple times in recent years and laid off thousands of workers.
Mayer faces an additional challenge because she has never run a company, let alone a large one that’s essentially fighting for its life vs. runaway competitors such as Google, Facebook, and even Twitter. Even more important, perhaps, though she was apparently moved over to Google’s local efforts to revive them, she hasn’t faced a true turnaround situation before. She could face a skeptical reception from investors, analysts, and especially Yahoo employees, who have seen two other outsider CEOs, Thompson and Carol Bartz, depart without making any headway. …
On paper, a charismatic product chief from the company largely responsible for Yahoo’s decline as an online advertising powerhouse looks like just what the Web pioneer needs. But her success now will depend not on what she has done in the past at the world’s most successful Internet company but what she can do next at the least successful one.
Read the complete post at The New Persuaders.
Filed under: advertising, AOL, display, Facebook, Google, local, search, Twitter, Yahoo Tagged: | advertising, Carol Bartz, display, Facebook, Google, Marissa Mayer, Ross Levinsohn, Scott Thompson, search, Yahoo
