Yahoo! poisoned chalice presents the right challenge for Marissa Mayer Why someone as high-flying as Ms Mayer would want to take on that poisoned chalice has many in the Valley baffled. However, it is worth remembering that when Ms Mayer joined Google, it was a shaky start-up surrounded by naysayers predicting its imminent demise. She has had practice at fending off the critics. She is also well-placed to fix some of Yahoo!"s biggest problems. Ms Mayer helped to build Google's reputation for click user experience, something Yahoo!"s cluttered, clunkier services could do with. Money help to oil the wheels of course. Ms Mayer stands to make a fortune if she succeeds in turning Yahoo! around, but even if she doesn't, she has already banked an estimated $300m in cash and shares during her 13-year tenure at Google. Meanwhile, her personal trajectory at the web search giant appears to have been slowing. Ms Mayer used to head up its flagship product, search, but was shuffled off to location-based services in the last restructure by chief executive Larry Page. It was significant that she described her decision to leave as "relatively easy" and that Google has chosen not to replace her. Reviving Yahoo! - impossible a task though it might seem - would be a major feather in her cap, and the ultimate way to send a signal to her former employers. Ms Mayer doesn't need the money anymore, but she probably does want the challenge.