雅虎共同創辦人費羅(David Filo)表示，近幾年來公司高層異動頻繁，未能專注於改善使用者經驗，「我們必須回歸基本面」。他表示，很高興梅爾同意加入雅虎團隊。梅爾則稱讚，雅虎是「網路最棒的品牌之一」。
梅爾表示，任職於谷歌的13年是一段驚奇旅程，但接下雅虎執行長職位卻是「相當簡單」的決定。她計畫善用雅虎旗下包括電郵、金融與體育等最受歡迎的服務，扭轉目前頹勢，同時也希望擴增線上影片與手機業務。
37歲的梅爾是谷歌成立後第20名員工，亦為谷歌首位女性工程師，曾負責包括谷歌搜尋首頁、電郵、新聞與圖像等業務，並於最近接下谷歌地圖等定位與在地服務，手下管理逾1000名產品經理。梅爾同時也是全球最大連鎖零售商沃爾瑪的董事會成員。
梅爾雖在谷歌一直擔任要職，卻未能被提拔為最高層主管，2010年她獲拔擢為副總裁，事業原可望再上一層樓，但隔年創辦人佩吉(Larry Page)重掌大權，卻轉而提拔赫柏(Jeff Huber)為資深副總裁，使梅爾晉升夢碎。
梅爾成為雅虎執行長後，將跟包括惠普(HP)執行長惠特曼(Meg Whitman)、IBM執行長羅梅提(Virginia Rometty)與臉書營運長桑德柏格(Sheryl Sandberg)等名列矽谷極少數坐擁最高權勢的女性高管。
原本呼聲最高的代理執行長雷文索恩(Ross Levinsohn)意外落馬，知情人士透露，可能是他的廣告背景未能加分反成為包袱，令高層質疑他是否有能力勝任執行長一職。
Biography:
Marissa Mayer is the Vice President of Local, Maps, and Location Services at Google. She oversees product management, engineering, design and strategy for the company's suite of local and geographical products, including Google Maps, Google Earth, Zagat, Street View, and local search, for desktop and mobile. She also curates the Google Doodle program, celebrating special events on Google's homepage around the world.
During her 12 years at Google, Marissa has held numerous positions, including engineer, designer, product manager, and executive, and has launched over 100 well-known features and products. Prior to her current role, she played an instrumental role in Google search, leading the product management efforts for more than 10 years, a period during which Google Search grew from a few hundred thousand to well over a billion searches per day. Marissa led the development of some of Google's most successful services including image, book and product search, toolbar, and iGoogle, and defined such pivotal products as Google News and Gmail. She is listed as an inventor on several patents in artificial intelligence and interface design.
Joining as the company's first female engineer in 1999, Marissa has played an important role in developing Google's culture. Her contributions have included overseeing the look-and-feel of the company's iconic homepage and founding the Associate Product Manager program, which has hired over 300 of the company's future leaders.
She graduated with honors from Stanford University with a BS in Symbolic Systems and a MS in Computer Science. For both degrees, she specialized in artificial intelligence. While at Stanford, she taught computer programming to more than 3000 students and received the Centennial Teaching and Forsythe Awards for her contributions to undergraduate education. In 2008, the Illinois Institute of Technology awarded her an honorary doctorate of engineering.
It has been quite a journey so far for Marissa, from her beginnings in Wisconsin, to the National Youth Science Camp, on to Stanford University and then landing at Google. Join NPR Correspondent Laura Sydell for a wide-ranging conversation about the educational choices Marissa made, her early role models and mentors, her work at Google, and her continuing role as a mentor -- to the next generation of computer scientists as well as women entrepreneurs like Tanzania's Susan Mashibe, TanJet Founder and Executive Director.
Shortly after the news broke about her move to Yahoo, Mayer announced she is pregnant. The baby boy's due date is in early October, just before Yahoo will be reporting how it fared under Mayer's leadership.
