Yahoo! Is surely hoping that they can put the past couple years, and several CEO changes behind them and begin focusing again on their future. Since 2009 Yahoo! Has seen several different people serve as CEO, some for only months. In 2009 Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!, stepped down. Carol Bartz, former CEO of Autodesk, took his place for a little over a year before being fired in 2011. Then the embarrassment of Scott Thompson who resigned in May after it was discovered that he lied about his academic credentials to get the job.
All this disruption in the leadership team couldn’t have come at a worse time either with many of their strongest competitors making huge advancements. Google’s ad serving arm, Adwords, has rocketed ahead of Yahoo, and Facebook is improving their ad servicing almost every day.
Marissa Mayer has been working for Google for the past 13 years and has established a reputation for herself as innovative, hard working and a visionary. In fact, whether you know it or not, you undoubtedly see her most famous piece of work almost every day. Marissa designed Google’s famous search home page years ago.
Marissa resigned from Google Monday afternoon with a phone call and will start her new role with Yahoo! Tuesday. The news has shocked many in the tech world, and breathed new life into the struggling Yahoo!. Shares of Yahoo! Stock rose by 2.14% to $15.98 in the extended hours trading after the news hit Wall Street. The momentum is expected by many to continue to build as the benefits Marissa brings to Yahoo! Continue to add up.
The board of directors at Yahoo! Made the unexpected move to bring Mayer in may very well prove to be the best choice they could make. Mayer has had years of experience in a similar company that was also supported by ad-revenue. Mayer has been working hard on the mobile technologies at Google and is expected to bring that focus with her to Yahoo! Possibly giving them a new and exciting outlook to users and investors alike.
The move seems very smart for Meyer personally as well because there was little chance that she would ever have gotten the opportunity to become CEO at Google. The two co-founders of the Internet search giant, Larry Page and Sergey Brin will not likely step down anytime in the near future which means Meyer would have been stuck in her position with little further advancement. Stepping into the CEO role at Yahoo! Gives her an opportunity to take one of the most powerful and well known tech companies in the world to the next level.
While there is still a lot of uncertainty behind the former dominant force on the internet, this move will certainly bring a lot of extra attention to Yahoo! Over the coming months. Most people expect that Meyer will be able to step into the role seamlessly and begin the difficult job of turning the company around.
