Yahoo CEO's pregnancy overshadows flat revenue

SAN FRANCISCO -- Yahoo hopes it picked a savior when it chose Googler Marissa Mayer as CEO in hopes of resuscitating business and birthing an improbable comeback.

Turns out Mayer, 37, is expecting the real thing, too. She disclosed on her Facebook profile late Monday that she's pregnant. Mayer first disclosed her pregnancy to Yahoo in late June, according to a Fortune report.

Though Yahoo posted flat sales and profit Tuesday, its freshly minted CEO provided all the sizzle.

"Marissa Mayer looks like a supermodel, talks like a politician and innovates like an engineer," says BlogHer CEO Lisa Stone.

Yahoo's new CEO, announced Monday, is the company's latest turnaround hopeful following a succession of misfortunes. She didn't preside over the company's earnings, which were presented by Chief Financial Officer Tim Morse, but nonetheless drew attention.

Fascination with Mayer's pregnancy across Twitter and the media isn't surprising. As a paper multimillionaire and one of Silicon Valley's most famous faces, she has been the focus of interest for years.

Yahoo's struggles were underscored Tuesday by flat second-quarter revenue of $1.08 billion compared with a year ago. The results sent Yahoo's stock up slightly, to $15.66, in after-hours trading.

Yahoo's appointment of Mayer has the company "incredibly energized and looking forward to working with our new CEO," Morse said on a conference call.

While the choice for her to lead Yahoo was surprising, Mayer's departure after 13 years at Google wasn't totally unexpected. As head of location products, she had no clear path to the upper reaches of the executive team.

"For Google, it's just another person leaving," says Karsten Weide, a former Yahoo executive who is now an IDC analyst. "As Google becomes more corporate, there might be people more qualified for what needs to be done."

Complicating matters is Yahoo's tortured history with Google, the company that many asserted cold-cocked Yahoo. Yahoo failed to buy Google when it had a chance and now has a search partnership with Microsoft — after federal regulators blocked a similar Google-Yahoo deal because of antitrust concerns.

What's more, Mayer's former boyfriend is Google CEO Larry Page.

As Yahoo's fifth CEO in five years, Mayer — the No. 20 employee at Google and a trained engineer — faces steep odds. The tenures of each of her predecessors ended in failure, as the company continues to be clobbered by Google and Facebook in advertising.

There is trepidation about Mayer and the quandary she inherits. "For Yahoo, it needs to be a media company, and her whole career is based on technology," says Michael Walrath, who sold Right Media to Yahoo in 2007 for $850 million.