Yahoo!: We can be pre-eminent web destination It says a lot then, that in August Airey joined Yahoo! as head of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). After all, this is a technology company whose performance over the past few years serves as a cautionary tale for the rest of the sector. She was attracted to the company, she says, partly because it was a "challenger brand" and partly because of a total "lack of cynicism" among its employees. The thing that clinched it for me was when I went to Sunnyvale. It was a little bit like going into Five, except on performance enhancing drugs," she says, her Lancashire accent evident. Everybody was consistent in their passion, their energy, their openness, their friendliness and their real love of and pride in the product. It was that culture that made me think, 'I want to be here."" That loyalty is so strong that it is not unheard of for Yahoo! employees to dye their hair to match the company colours. I wonder if Airey has drunk the proverbial Kool-Aid. Yahoo! staff were still claiming that they worked for the "premier content company in the world" days after Carol Bartz, the former chief executive, was fired "over the phone" by the board. Airey, though, is quick to squash my scepticism. "You're a Brit!" she says. Let's be clear here. You don't have a chip slipped in between a couple of vertebrae so everything that comes out of you is Yahoo-speak. I don't run America, I run EMEA, old school countries, and the culture is exactly the same [here]. There is a passion that sears through people's veins. Much of that passion comes from the company's status as one of America's first big dotcom successes. The business was founded in 1994 as a portal to the web, and was catapulted to a value of $140bn (£87bn) over the next six years. However, the subsequent dotcom crash sent that value plummeting to little over $18bn. At the same time, newer entrants such as Google grew and Yahoo! lost its footing. It struck a series of bad deals, not least outsourcing all its search technology to Microsoft, and struggled to retain the best staff. Yahoo!"s difficulties descended into farce in 2011 and 2012, as it chewed its way through four chief executives in less than 12 months. Bartz signed off by telling reporters she'd been "f----d" by the company's board. Another, Scott Thompson, was ousted after his CV was found to be inaccurate. The revolving door finally stopped when Marissa Mayer took the helm in June 2012. The former Google search chief gave Yahoo! a much-needed morale boost and helped to transform the company's reputation from a flabby dinosaur - at least in Silicon Valley terms - to a place where engineers wanted to work. Earlier this year, it received as many as 17,000 applications in a single week, including many from former "Yahoos" - the term the company uses for its staff. Meanwhile the company's value has more than doubled to $37.3bn and, in the US, it briefly pulled ahead of Google as the country's most visited website. However, restoring the company's fortunes remains a mammoth task. The company's results may show slow and steady improvement but they also make it painfully clear that there is no quick fix to be had. If the job is an uphill struggle in the US, where Yahoo! still ranks as the second most-loved brand, it is like swimming through mud in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Airey has already helped to buoy morale in the region, in the same way that Mayer did in the US. Her next task is to win back advertisers. The first major step in that direction came last week, when the company launched a real-time news feed on its European home page. It may sound like a superficial tweak but Airey argues that it is radical. Users will be invited to save stories for later and indicate pieces they do and do not like, so that Yahoo! can automatically serve up an "almost infinite stream" of carefully selected content, putting it in competition with the likes of Twitter. "This is what homepages should all be like," says Airey. The more you use it, the more you tell it about what articles you like and don't like, the more we observe your behaviour and habits, so we can provide an almost infinite stream that is relevant to you. We lead bloody busy lives, and actually someone who gives us what we want based on past behaviour - we love them for it. She is confident that users will flock to the service if it is good enough. The interesting thing about the world that we're now in is that, if you create something wonderful, people will find it, pass it around and have a look. It all comes down to products, and Marissa, our rock and roll chief executive, is completely obsessed about the quality of the user experience," she says. "To be honest, if we deliver on our promises, there is no reason why we can't be the pre-eminent web destination for all of your needs, whether that's search, whether that's mail, whether that's access to content," Airey says. It is hard to conceive of Yahoo! overtaking Google again, a company that is worth close to 10 times more, but that is what Airey has in her sights. The bigger the better! To be honest, world domination isn't big enough," she jokes before adding seriously: "We are starting to see signs of growth. I'm very optimistic. In terms of where we end up? It's really nice being number one. Number one is not what Airey is used to, however. The 52-year-old has spent most of her career at one challenger brand or another and has amassed some colourful tales en route. We last met shortly after she had rejoined Five, in 2009, when she stunned a party with a film of her waking-up beside the then-director of programmes, Richard Woolfe. Ha! That is the last time I woke up next to a man!" she laughs. Airey lives with her civil partner, Jacquie Lawrence, and their two children. There were more colourful tales when the company was sold to Richard Desmond but Airey is obediently silent on that front. Let me see what I say about Five. I think I'm only allowed to say nice things about it," she says with a butter-wouldn't-melt tone. I can't say anything negative about Richard Desmond, nor would I. What about the broadcaster itself? "You know what?" she says. I don't watch it any more. I don't even turn it on. She is saving all her material for the book she is writing, which she will publish "when I never want to work again." Michael Grade. That's another great chapter," she exclaims. There are many in the television industry who hope she will keep it under wraps for some time yet, so that she can have a crack at running the BBC. She was a contender to become director general of the BBC when George Entwistle got the post and her name is likely to come up again when its current incumbent, Lord Hall, finishes his clean-up job. However, Airey does not think she would be offered the post and she is probably right that her famous "three Fs" mantra would be badly received in certain quarters. Me and the BBC, it was never going to be. I'm sure I am considered to be a bit too maverick," she says. I'm probably in quite a good place for me at this point in my career. Old dog, new tricks and all that. It is not just Airey who must pull off a new trick. Yahoo! must do so as well. Dawn Airey CV Born Lancashire, 1960 Family Civil partner, two children Education Read geography at Girton College, Cambridge Career 1997 Launched Five as its director of programmes, then promoted to chief executive; 2002 Joined Sky; 2007 Eight days at Isostar, then content director at ITV; 2008 Moved back to Five as chief executive; 2010 Joined parent company RTL, after Five was bought by Northern & Shell; 2013 Appointed head of EMEA at Yahoo!