YAHOO! has lurched from one strategic blunder to another—and from one chief executive to another—for so long it is hard to remember the time when it used to be a shining star in the tech firmament. Now it has raised eyebrows once again by announcing on July 16th that Marissa Mayer, a senior executive at Google, will become its new boss.

Ms Mayer’s arrival just ahead of the company’s latest quarterly results came out of the blue. Many analysts and investors had assumed Yahoo!’s board would anoint Ross Levinsohn, the firm’s interim chief executive, as its new, full-time leader. A veteran of the company, he had laid out a vision for Yahoo!’s future as a digital media company over the last few months and had brought talented executives to the firm such as Michael Barrett, Yahoo!’s new head of sales.

But there were signs that the board was not totally convinced Mr Levinsohn was the man to take over from Scott Thompson, the former chief executive, who left after a fuss over his educational qualifications. There were rumours that the company was seriously considering the boss of Hulu, an online movie-and-TV business, for the role. In the end, however, Yahoo! chose to pinch an executive from its toughest competitor.

Ms Mayer will not be the first woman to run Yahoo! Carol Bartz, who famously promised to “drop-kick to fucking Mars” any employee found leaking secrets at Yahoo! when she joined the company, got there first. But Ms Mayer, who is altogether a smoother operator than Ms Bartz, is in some ways better prepared for her role. Ms Bartz had little experience of the consumer internet world, whereas Ms Mayer has been immersed in it since she joined Google as the company’s 20th employee. After overseeing the look and feel of products such as search and Gmail for a long time, she moved to take charge of the company’s location and local services, including Google Maps.

Her engineering background and product management experience appear to have made Ms Mayer irresistible to Yahoo!’s board. The company has struggled to develop new offerings that wow users, so her skills are certainly valuable. Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, said in a statement that Ms Mayer “is a great product person, very innovative and a real perfectionist who always wants the best for users".

But those who thought Mr Levinsohn was destined for the job point out that Ms Mayer will face a steep learning curve at Yahoo! She will also have to try and keep on board the talented Mr Levinsohn, who has now been passed over a couple of times for the top slot at Yahoo!. A consummate networker who has hosted fund-raisers in Silicon Valley for Barack Obama, Ms Mayer certainly has polished diplomatic skills. She will need them.

(Photo credit: AFP)