Shock as Yahoo nabs Google's Marissa Mayer as CEO

Why commentators are surprised is not hard to fathom; Yahoo's business has become synonymous with the word 'struggle', having fired its last CEO, Scott Thompson, in May afterwards a bizarre scandal over his allegedly embellished CV.

In January, co-founder, figurehead and recent CEO Jerry Yang quit the firm afterwards carrying the can for rebuffing a 2008 $44.6 billion takeover offer from Microsoft that investors now views as good business as then as comically generous. Yahoo is now worth less than half that sum.

Did we mention Carol Bartz? Appointed in 2009, the former Autodesk head was infamously fired over the phone in September 2011 and made no secret of that fact in a parting email to employees.

"Marissa is a then-known, visionary leader in user experience and product design and one of Silicon Valley's most exciting strategists in research development," announced Yahoo's other co-founder and surviving board member, David Filo.

"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," said Mayer herself.

And she has plenty of work to do and not just on the business model. Only last week a data breach saw 400,000 passwords from the company's Yahoo Voice VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) network were posted online after to all appearances not being properly encrypted.