The Week, 23 July 2012

Yahoo "electrified " Silicon Valley and its own 12000-strong workforce this week by poaching Marissa Mayer, one of Google's earliest and most famous employees, to become its new chief executive, said Stephen Foley in The Independent. It's a "stunning" defection given that Yahoo, which has now had five bosses in five years, is seen as "the most poisonous chalice in tech". It would be hard to imagine Yahoo securing a better CEO, agreed Lex in the FT.  Mayer, a computer science engineer, has been a crucial part of Google since the start, guiding the look and feel of all its consumer products, from the home page to Gmaps.  At Yahoo, Mayer may struggle to solve the riddle of whether the former giant is a tech company or a media and marketing business, said Rob Cox on Breakingviews.  She certainly has the "engineering cred", but it's "not clear she has the marketing chops" to pull it off.