CAN IT BE DONE? - Mayer heads to Yahoo! … And is pregnant
Some might have ask - What will Breaking Bad do to Yahoo? Marissa Mayer’s last tweet - before announcing her resignation from Google yesterday and her new gig at Yahoo! starting today - was a confession that she finally gave in to watching Breaking Bad. One episode per day. ‘Can it be done?’, she asked - which now seems like a much more meaningful question, given that she takes over the top job at tumultuous Yahoo! and is +1 (It’s a Boy!). Mayer could be the perfect fit and might be able to pull it off, both.
The choice of a product-centric CEO over sales-focused interim chief Ross Levinsohn is a sign that the Yahoo! board is ready for a deeper turn-around. Innovation-infused products, a clear and strong consumer proposition and regained advertiser faith is desperately needed to activate Yahoo!’s huge audience potential of more than 600 million visitors. And Mayer brings that to the table: in her 13 years at the search giant, she launched over 100 features and products and held numerous positions - from engineer to designer, to product manager, and executive - most recently heading up Local, Maps, and Location Services for Google. Mayer was Google’s ‘poster women’ and until recently the public face of the company (before Sergey Brin took over with Google Glasses stunts).
In a recent interview at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women she recalled how she ended up at Google - and how her previous career moves have guided her decision making - from switching to an engineering major in Stanford from paediatric neuroscience and not knowing how to properly order produce in Europe during a banking job in Zurich.
“When you do something you’re not ready to do, that’s when you push yourself and you grow,” she said then. “It’s when you sort of move through that moment of discomfort of, ‘Wow, what have I gotten myself into this time?’”
Good luck and all the best!
