In January 2009, Marissa Mayer – by her own admission – broke the internet.
2009年1月，梅里莎•梅尔(Marissa Mayer)——据她自己承认——"打碎了"互联网。
As Google's vice-president of search products, Ms Mayer was responsible for what was then the world's most popular website. An errant "/" in a computer code had triggered a chain of events that resulted in the message "This site may harm your computer" popping up alongside every search result.
作为谷歌(Google)搜索产品副总裁，梅尔负责当时世界最流行的网站。计算机代码中一个错误的"/"符号引发了一连串事件，导致每一项搜索结果中都会弹出这样的信息"该站点可能损害您的计算机"。
"It was as if the internet was broken," she told Newsweek . "I work well under pressure, but I began to have this horrifying sense of just how many millions of people were looking at their computer screens thinking, what is going on? And how many of them were clicking straight over to Yahoo."
她告诉《新闻周刊》(Newsweek)："好像互联网破碎了一样。我在压力之下也能很好地工作，但我开始产生这样的恐惧感：会有几百万的人盯着他们的电脑屏幕，心里琢磨着，到底出什么事了？其中有多少人会直接转到雅虎(Yahoo)？"
After Ms Mayer hit two phone lines, eight instant-messenger chats and made a video call from a family holiday hotel room, the problem was fixed in just under an hour.
在梅尔从一家家庭假日酒店的房间里打爆两条电话线路、在即时通讯工具上进行了八次聊天并打了一通视频电话以后，这个问题在一个小时内得到修正。
In the end, not many users switched over to Yahoo: Google's dominance in search has continued largely unabated. But three years later, Ms Mayer herself has "gone purple", becoming Yahoo's fifth chief executive in as many years.
最终，没有多少用户转向雅虎：谷歌在搜索领域的主导地位基本上没有削弱。然后，3年后，梅尔自己"紫袍加身"，成为雅虎5年来第5任首席执行官。
News of her poaching – and that she has taken the job while six months pregnant – might also have strained the internet a little, so huge was the reaction, particularly in Silicon Valley. At just 37, Ms Mayer was one of Google's longest-serving and best-known executives.
梅尔被雅虎挖走——并且是在怀有6个月身孕的时候接受这项任命——的消息或许也让互联网紧张了一下，尤其是在硅谷(Silicon Valley)，反响非常强烈。年仅37岁的梅尔是谷歌任职时间最长、知名度最高的高管之一。
But fixing Yahoo will take a little longer than the broken internet that January morning and despite her many talents, Ms Mayer must prove that she can outlast her combined predecessors to collect more than $100m in potential compensation.
但修补雅虎所需的时间远比那年1月早晨修补破碎互联网的时间要长。尽管梅尔多才多艺，她必须证明自己能够比所有前任合计任职时间在这个位置上坐的更长久，才能拿到总计超过1亿美元的潜在薪酬。
Although she has built her reputation over 13 years at Google, one of the world's smartest companies, Ms Mayer's plan to turn round Yahoo by focusing on innovation and product developments comes after years of flatlining revenues. Riding the wave of constant growth at Google may not have adequately prepared her for the difficulties at Yahoo, sceptics say.
梅尔是在谷歌工作13年的期间闯出了名头，谷歌是世界最聪明的企业之一，而雅虎多年来营收不见增长。她在雅虎的扭亏大计是把重点放在创新和产品开发上。质疑者表示，谷歌一直在不断增长，梅尔背靠大树好乘凉，这样的她不一定有足够的经验来应对雅虎的困境。
Nonetheless, she is the closest thing Google has had to a celebrity. One ad agency executive this week grumbled that he had never met her but knew plenty about her from San Francisco society pages, which have documented her penthouse atop the Four Seasons Hotel and hirings of entire cinemas to show friends flicks such as Sex and the City.
不过，在谷歌，梅尔是最接近于明星的人。一家广告公司高管本周抱怨，虽然他从没见过梅尔，但从旧金山社会版中早已对她了如指掌。从报纸上可以得知，她在四季酒店(Four Seasons)顶层拥有高级住房，她会租借整家电影院，只为了给朋友们放映电影，比如《欲望都市》(Sex and the City)。
She has been profiled in Vogue, which lauded her as "the most poised and powerful information guru", and drooled over the "snowflake lace" wedding dress Ms Mayer wore when she married entrepreneur Zack Bogue. The pair, whose first child is due in October, reportedly enjoy marathons, cooking and long hikes in the Alps.
她曾登上《Vogue》，该杂志称赞她为"最自信、最有影响力的信息大师"，并对她和创业者扎克•博格(Zack Bogue)结婚时穿的"雪片蕾丝"婚纱赞叹不已。这对夫妇的第一个孩子将于今年10月降生。据报道他们二人喜欢马拉松、烹饪以及在阿尔卑斯山远足。
Her investments are among Silicon Valley's hippest: Square, the payment company led by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, ex-president of Facebook Sean Parker's new video-chat service Airtime, and high-end ecommerce site One Kings Lane.
她的投资对象也是硅谷最时髦的：Twitter联合创始人杰克•多尔西(Jack Dorsey)执掌下的支付公司Square，Facebook前总裁肖恩•帕克(Sean Parker)新创立的视频聊天服务Airtime，以及高端商务网站One Kings Lane。
Ms Mayer has always known the right places to be seen. The granddaughter of a Wisconsin mayor, she grew up in Wausau, a midsized town in the Midwestern state. At high school she managed to make both the debating team and dance group – a combination of brains and blonde that would fare her well as the media-friendly face of Google at a time when few of the search engine's geeky guys were interested in talking to the press.
梅尔始终知道站在哪里最能引人关注。她是美国中西部地区威斯康星州一名市长的孙女，在该州一个中型城镇沃索长大。高中时加入了辩论队和舞蹈队，这是智慧与美貌的结合。就是凭借这一点，她日后在谷歌以"亲媒体"的面孔走的顺风顺水，那时这家搜索引擎的极客们没有几个人愿意搭理媒体。
But her blossoming profile irked some of her fellow Googlers, particularly when San Francisco magazine dubbed her the "Googirl" in a glowing 2008 interview that was more about her than the company.
不过她光辉的履历也惹恼了部分谷歌同事，尤其是一家旧金山杂志在2008年一次热情洋溢的采访中赞美她是"谷歌女孩"之后，那次采访更多是在谈论她，而非谷歌这家公司。
"She was clearly the outlier," says one former colleague at Google. "Some of that is curated. When she has her picture taken she makes sure she is dressed to the nines and that the photos come out great."
一名前谷歌同事称："显然她是名局外人。有些是刻意安排出来的。她接受拍照时，一定要保证打扮得精致时髦，出来的照片光彩照人。"
Despite playing to the media's superficialities, in the office Ms Mayer makes decisions based on hard data. That may not be readily accepted by the more political Yahoo, which many Silicon Valley observers like to call a media company, with all the cosier connotations that carries.
尽管她会迎合媒体的肤浅，但在办公室里梅尔是依靠实实在在的数据进行决策的。这或许尚无法被更为政治化的雅虎所接受，硅谷的很多观察人士倾向于称雅虎为一家媒体公司，这种叫法含有更为亲切的意味。
"She has good IQ but not EQ [emotional intelligence]," says one Mayer supporter, who believes doing a better job of relating to people will be critical to succeeding as chief executive of Yahoo.
梅尔的一位支持者表示："她智商高，情商低。"这位支持者认为，搞好人际关系将是当好雅虎首席执行官的一个关键。