Mountain View, Calif.--Marissa Mayer has been named CEO of Yahoo Inc. after 13 years at Google Inc., where she served as one of the top executives on the search company’s management team.
Employee number 20 and the first female hire at Google, Mayer, who joined the company age 24, rose rapidly through the ranks to become VP of search in October 2010.
Mayer holds both a B.S. in symbolic systems and an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University, having specialized in artificial intelligence for both. She also received an honorary doctorate from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 2009 for her work in the field of search.
Taking the top job at Yahoo will be a true test of Mayer’s mettle, however. The flailing search engine has cycled through no less than seven CEOs since 1995 and has seen its stock drop 41 percent in the last year alone.
Plagued by scandals and bad business decisions, Yahoo’s most recent debacle included the resignation in May of four month CEO Scott Thompson, after questions arose over whether he had lied about his academic credentials.
Mayer will start as Yahoo CEO on Tuesday (July 17) and will also be joining Yahoo’s board.