Sunday, February 24, 2013

Hot! Google's Marissa Mayer Named Ceo

Marissa Mayer will be Yahoo's fourth CEO in four years.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) Yahoo has a new CEO again! And this time the selection came completely out of left field.

Marissa Mayer , a Google executive and one of the first two dozen employees at the search giant, will take the reins of the struggling Yahoo.

for the job.

She takes over at a tumultuous time for a fading Web icon: She is the company's fourth CEO in less than four years.

"There's a lot to do," Mayer told Fortune's Patricia Sellers moments after Yahoo announced her appointment. She is starting her new job on Tuesday, just hours before Yahoo is slated to release its latest quarterly earnings report.

Yahoo had been in need of a leader since May, when Scott Thompson was ousted after just four months in the wake of a scandal over his embellished college degree.

Now, it's Mayer's turn to answer the age-old question: What, exactly, is Yahoo?

The company calls itself "the premier digital media company," and its news properties attract loads of traffic. But Yahoo's brand now has lots of baggage and a sprawling product portfolio.

Thompson took a stab at defining Yahoo during his few months at the company. In April, he reorganized the company into three groups: consumer, ad-focused "regions," and technology.

Fortune 500 ) co-founder Jerry Yang, stepped down after shareholders were angered by his snubbing of a buyout offer from Microsoft (, Fortune 500 ).

On the positive side, most of Yahoo's previous directors were wiped out in a board shakeup in February. Three nominees from Third Point the activist shareholder fund that exposed Thompson's resume lie have instead joined the board, and a new chairman is in place.

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