Google’s Marissa Mayer is Now Yahoo’s CEO

Marissa Mayer was in many ways the pride and joy of Google.  Called the “GooGirl” and “Google’s celebrity exec,” this 37-year old was the 20th employee, the first female engineer, and is one of a relatively small number of women in high-ranking positions in the tech world, standing alongside such famed females as Hewlett-Packard’s CEO Meg Whitman and Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg.

While she was earning her degree in computer science at Stanford, she also danced in “The Nutcracker” ballet.  With her sense of fashion, design, glamour, and girl things, she breaks the stereotype of the awkward geek with thick glasses.  She not only loves cupcakes but, according to interviews with other news organizations, she used her geek skills to program a spreadsheet to determine the perfect recipe.

While the announcement sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley and beyond, many think she’s just what Yahoo needed – a product-minded CEO.  Getting products launched at Google was not only her job, it was her passion.  She is credited with launching some of Google’s most iconic products including Gmail, Google Maps and more.  In 2009, the New York Times did a profile on Marissa Mayer. NYT  wrote, “An engineer at heart, she also had something that many of her peers did not during Google’s early days: a keen sense of style and design.”

“You can be good at technology and like fashion and art. You can be good at technology and be a jock,” Mayer says. “You can be good at technology and be a mom. You can do it your way, on your terms.”

“This is a great move for Yahoo, which has stewed in mediocrity for years,” wrote ReadWriteWeb’s Dan Frommer. “Mayer, a big shot in Silicon Valley and a perfectionist product-type executive, could legitimately make Yahoo respectable again. At the very least, she will command attention.”