Unauthorised biography goes behind Marissa Mayer's iron curtain A NEW unauthorised biography of Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer has demonstrated a strikingly different persona than the one seen on red carpets and newspaper front pages. Far from the warm, charismatic way she is portrayed on television, at conferences or in "fluffy profiles," Mayer is portrayed by Business Insider journalist Nicholas Carlson as brutal, blunt, pedantic but 150 per cent committed to changing Yahoo! from the inside out. In fact her attention to detail may have been too much for even Google to handle. Carlson writes that though Mayer did "spectacularly well" at Google where she designed its homepage, created its product management structure and "became the face of the company," she was demoted between 2010-2012 due to public disagreements with colleagues. Lead designer Dan Bowman said he quit Google after Mayer forced him to justify every minuscule decision he made to design with data. Bowman wrote of Mayer on his blog saying "a team at Google couldn't decide between two blues, so they're testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can't operate in an environment like that. I've grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle. Despite being responsible for so much of Google's design and products, Mayer's name was nowhere to be seen, other people took credit for her work. Her colleagues were promoted ahead of her. Her name was removed from Google's managerial website. Marissa Mayer during her days at Google. Mayer allegedly adapted her professional style from her days of academia at Stanford University. If people wanted to talk to her, Mayer would make them book five-minute meetings with her during "office hours," which may work in the academic world but it more than grated on people at Google. It is alleged that a group of Google engineers conspired to diminish Mayer's power in the company. John Batelle, who hosts several large tech conferences in Silicon Valley, said he had "never had a conversation with her when she wasn't completely certain he was right." Mayer's style of running things irked YouTube CEO, Salar Kamangar to such an extent that he and three other search engineers approached Google CEO Larry Page and asked that she be removed from the top of its search organisation. "These four guys, they were constantly being hampered," a source said. They'd say: 'We want to roll out this ranking change.' Marissa's like, 'until I review it, you can't launch it.' They're like: 'But it's been three weeks.' Finally, says this source, Singhal and the other engineers went to Larry Page and said, 'Take your pick. Her, or us.' In 2012 Mayer was recruited to join Yahoo! amid much controversy. Both privately and publicly chairman of Yahoo!'s board, Fred Amoroso had all but promised the role to its interim CEO Ross Levensohn. But behind closed doors Yahoo! had been interviewing for a new CEO. Levensohn would eventually leave the company after Mayer was appointed ahead of him. He had a vision for the business which did not include competing with the likes of Google and Facebook by releasing competitive products. He wanted to turn Yahoo! into a media company that could compete with other US cable companies such as NBC and Fox. This wasn't what the board wanted to hear. Board members say they were "blown away" by Mayer who, during an interview in June of 2012, had explained her "surprisingly thought out plan for overhauling Yahoo!'s culture, executive style and product line up." She would describe the company as one with a perception problem, and said that it didn't know what kind of company it wanted to be. After Mayer left, one of the board directors said to Citrin: 'That's the next CEO of Yahoo.' Within months Mayer would be appointed CEO. She quickly noticed many employees would often arrive late and leave early or sign in from home, and quickly put an end to that, famously banning people from working from home. She would also take complete control of all public communications from the company. All communications, whether it be on Twitter or a formal announcement had to be approve by Mayer and head of PR Anne Espiritu. The Vogue image of Marissa Mayer. Mayer may be a stickler for detail and not all employees may like it, but it's certainly working. "Yahoo claims that after Mayer's redesigns, traffic to apps for Yahoo Mail is up 120 per cent; Yahoo Weather, 150 per cent; and Yahoo News, 55 per cent," Carlson wrote. In her first year, Mayer was able to keep traffic to Yahoo Mail on the web flat, and even slightly grow Yahoo.com. In an age where big websites usually shrink because people check their email and news on their phones, that's remarkable. In the middle of August 2013, ComScore reported that Yahoo Web properties had passed Google properties as the most popular in the United States. Read the full 21,500 word essay here.