Marissa Mayer is now the CEO of Yahoo.  The move is a surprising catch and major coup for Yahoo, which for years has been struggling to stay alive and losing market share in the search engine business. The former Google executive is a well-recognized and very public presence in Silicon Valley.  Her history at the company goes back to the very beginning.     The move puts her in ranks with other current and former female technology CEOs,  such as Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, to name a couple.

Mayer has a lasting and significant presence at Google as much of the plain and simple interface that Google uses on their products is a product of Mayer’s work on the design throughout the years.  A resident of Palo Alto, and neighbor of SiliconANGLE founder John Furrier, perhaps the best instant reaction was: “That’s great! Marissa throws the best Halloween parties.”

John went on to talk about the implications of Marissa’s new job on the US tech ecosystem.

“This could theoretically put the tenuous Bing/Yahoo search deal in jeopardy,” said Furrier. “Mayer was virtually present at creation with Google, and even dated Larry Page at one point. The Google DNA will most certainly infect Yahoo.”

SiliconANGLE Founding Editor Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins wondered how badly the departure from Google would be felt.

“From what I’ve always read of Mayer, her involvement at Google extended far beyond that of a normal executive and employee,” said Hopkins. “An executive that puts in 10 to 18 hour days has to leave a crater when they’re not there.”

Indeed Marissa Mayer is a rockstar in Silicon Valley, and we’re big fans of Mayer here at SiliconANGLE.  Despite the loss, the move is actually good for Google, and obviously good for Yahoo.  Google isn’t in the content business, and a partnership with Yahoo could leverage Yahoo’s content business with Google’s aggregation and search capabilities.