Yahoo! is hiring Google executive Marissa Mayer, a native of Wausau, to be its next chief executive officer.
Mayer will be Yahoo!’s fifth CEO in five years, not including two interim CEOs.
Yahoo! is struggling to rebound from years of financial and internal turmoil.
She will start at Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo! on Tuesday. Mayer was one of Google’s earliest employees and was the first female engineer at Google.
She rose to become Google’s vice president of local, maps and location services.
Ross Levinsohn, who joined Yahoo! in 2010, has been running the company on an interim basis after CEO Scott Thompson lost his job in a flap over exaggerated academic credentials in his official biography.
Mayer, 37, graduated from Wausau West High School in 1993 and earned a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford University.
Prior to joining Google, Mayer worked at the UBS research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland, and at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif.
Mayer said, “I am honored and delighted to lead Yahoo!, one of the internet’s premier destinations for more than 700 million users. I look forward to working with the company’s dedicated employees to bring innovative products, content, and personalized experiences to users and advertisers all around the world.”
Yahoo! co-founder David Filo said, “Marissa is a well-known, visionary leader in user experience and product design and one of Silicon Valley’s most exciting strategists in technology development. I look forward to working with her to enhance Yahoo’s product offerings for our over 700 million unique monthly visitors.”
