She joined Google aged 24 after studying computer science at Stanford University, becoming custodian of the homepage as well as other core services such as Gmail. "I had the rare privilege of watching a service scale 10,000 times over and build the back-end infrastructure," she says, when asked about her main achievement there.
梅尔在斯坦福大学(Stanford University)计算机科学专业毕业后，于24岁之龄加入谷歌。她在谷歌负责管理主页和Gmail等其他一些核心服务。当被问及她在谷歌的主要成就时，梅尔表示："我享有罕见的特权，目睹了一项服务增长了一万倍，并且构建了后台基础设施。"
"At heart, Marissa is a product person, not a media or tech person," says Dan Crow, chief technology officer at Songkick, a live music website, who worked with Ms Mayer in the late 2000s and believes she is an "inspired choice" to run Yahoo.
现场音乐网站Songkick首席技术官丹•克罗(Dan Crow)表示："本质上，梅里莎是一位做产品的人，而不是媒体或者科技人士。"他曾于21世纪前10年的后几年和梅尔共事，认为她是执掌雅虎的"卓越人选"。
But Ms Mayer was seen as being sidelined in her later years at Google and emerges with a mixed reputation as a manager. One underling called her a "demanding diva", while a peer describes her as a "high latency micromanager".
但有人认为，梅尔在谷歌的最后几年被边缘化了，成为一名毁誉参半的经理人。一名下属称她为"苛刻的天后"，而同行则描述她为一名"深度潜伏、事无巨细的管理者"。
Josh McFarland, another ex-Google staffer now running data-marketing company TellApart, dismisses backbiters who say Ms Mayer rode on the coat-tails of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google's co-founders. "You can't hide in a 20-person company," he says."You can't rise so far and be so close to the founders and not be brilliant. Larry and Sergey do not suffer fools."
如今在经营数据营销公司TellApart的谷歌前员工乔希•麦克法兰(Josh McFarland)对那些背后嚼舌头、认为梅尔不过是搭了谷歌联合创始人拉里•佩奇(Larry Page)和谢尔盖•布林(Sergey Brin)顺风车的人很是不以为然。他说："在一家只有20个人的公司里你无处躲藏。不聪明不可能升的这么高，和创始人保持如此密切的关系。拉里和布林可不会容忍傻瓜。"
Crucial to her success at Yahoo will be answering what the website, visited by hundreds of millions of people, is really for in an age of Facebook and Google dominance.
她在雅虎能否取得成功，关键要看她如何回答这个问题：在Facebook和谷歌主导的时代，对于雅虎这家有数亿用户的网站应如何定位？
Some, however, suspect the posting will serve to boost Ms Mayer's profile yet further, regardless of whether she can answer that question. "If she does something great, huge win," says a Yahoo alumnus. "If she can't, she can say it wasn't fixable and will still have had the opportunity of sitting in a CEO position."
不过，有人怀疑，不管她能否回答这个问题，担任雅虎首席执行官这个职位都会进一步提升梅尔的资历。一位雅虎校友表示："如果她能做出一些伟大的成就，那就是巨大的胜利。如果不能，她可以说雅虎已经无可救药，她仍有机会担任一家公司的首席执行官。"