Google’s Vice President of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer was recently profiled in a Vogue Magazine article that offered a in-depth glimpse into the exec’s lifestyle, loves, career and fashion preferences. Now, Mayer has been named as one of Glamour Magazine’s 2009 Women of the Year. Joining Mayer on the list are a variety of female powerhouses and icons including Maya Angelou, First Lady Michelle Obama, Susan Rice, Euna Lee and Laura Ling.
Mayer has been frequently profiled in business and technology publications over the years, but it’s also nice to see her achievements highlighted in magazines like Vogue and Glamour. The brainy Stanford-grad has been able to set an example for young women everywhere. As one of Google’s early hires, she’s now helping to lead product design for one of the world’s most innovative companies. And she’s only 34. What’s not to love about a successful and geeky coder who also loves to wear Oscar de la Renta, Chanel and Armani?
Photo credit/Glamour Magazine/Brigitte Lacombe
i like her
mee2
omg u2!?
Interesting brand building strategy by Vogue & Glamour guys….:)
~ Arvind
@marvindanig
i am truly impressed with this enlightened pick for “woman of the year”. Marissa represents the very ideal of silicon valley: a truly entrepreneurial spirit, who by sheer force of will has surmounted huge obstacles to reach the pinnacle of tech success.
Marrisa’s choice of Oscar De La Renta as role model should also be applauded. In these times of recession, we should recognize the creative genius of designers such as De La Renta, and the “hope” that they bring to the global economy.
Bravo Marissa! and Bravo Techcrunch!
Make Brisket Not War
shes’ damn cute!
Yeah cute as a pie
http://bit.ly/2vaeGG
wow seriously? i bet Marketing did segmentation and found an untapped market in nerds for their magazine.
i know someone really well who works at google….when i once mentioned to him about her…his face turned bad…he too is an engineer and he has a bad taste for her…i heard that a group of engineers at google went out on a celebration when they did not have to report to her anymore…people in the valley need to stop drinking the kool aid when it comes to the likes of someone like this…it took a lot from her for my friend not to like her since he really is a nice person….if she happens to be all that, why hasn’t she started a firm yet?
The same has been said about Steve Jobs.
and Arrington
Hot. Playboy needs to do a Women of Google issue next.
Yea, they’d go out of business INSTANTLY
She reminds me of Charlotte ‘Chuck’ Charles!
Congrats to Marissa.
Just because she can afford expensive designer clothing doesn’t mean she has taste. I now understand why Googles UI and product design looks so crappy — engineers shouldn’t design.
without her Googl is an ugly offering.
i like her, even without clothes
That pic was a bit photoshopped… otherwise I think she has it pretty together…. smart chick…
sharp!
I’ve met her in person and she’s absolutely a double B… Beauty and Brains!
Congratulations Marissa!
I like her style, smart and glamourous type!
barf
Cool! Great recognition for a woman’s work in a male-dominated industry.
Hey..She’s wearing one of those push up bras.
she’s cute,nothing to write home about
and otherwise the whole glamor mag thing is
a joke.
Congratulations Marissa!
You deserve it
Congrats to Marissa!
Love the contrast of style in the photo – how she’s so elegant and beautiful while the office around her so messy.
How bout that laugh of her’s. Did she fix it yet?
“Hers.” Don’t be a hater, especially if you have poor grammar.
Wow! I’m very happy about the fact that ANOTHER WOMAN–and a very intelligent one, at that–has invaded glamor and posh mags once again. No offense intended for these mags, but I just feel the same excitement as what you stated, Leena. After being featured in technological mags, she’s with a high-fashion magazine now! Another hoorah for women who really pay attention to their brains as well!
I completely agree!! I think Mayer is way cool and brilliant and innovative, but featuring her in a magazine that mostly shows women readers how to wear $100 garments (at least that’s my impression from the covers, apologies if that’s not what Glamour is really about) is just terribly contrived.
Since everything important has already been covered by tech mags, their article would probably be something like “everybody knows Marissa is a business beacon in Silicon Valley, but did you know she has a *life* as well?” And if you’re going to profile people that way, why not feature a man on the cover for once?
I will poke her yahoo and google on her facebook
Marissa Mayer is exciting.
TechCrunch is normally on the ball when calling BS on phoniness. This time, your fanboy/fangirl love of Marissa is truly blind and over the top. There’s no doubt Marissa is smart and driven, but in the years I’ve been an engineer at Google, I’ve seen her work tirelessly on promoting herself and her image, at the expense of the people she works with. In one of many examples, in the past I’ve waited in line outside of her office with dozens of other busy people for hours, seeking 3 minutes of her mandatory and unneccesary micromanagement time, because she was late due to a photo shoot that went over on time. Most of the people in line, representing immeasurable value, produvtivity and brain power, got blown off, losing hours of their day. She has quashed innovation, design talent and people’s spirits with her iron-fisted design fascism and pixel micromanagement during her “design reviews”. She’s ruthlessly political, sniping at her peers and trying to amass resources and power at the expense of others. There is no question she has made herself powerful at Google, and rules through fear and intimidation, and anyone that speaks up or resists is quickly dispensed with. The only people she truly gets along with are the young Stanford graduates that she hand-picks to be product managers/slaves, and that haven’t worked anywhere else to know how dysfunctional things really are. Invariably, these sycophants will come to her defense, but the industry veterans and others with outside experience know the real deal.
TechCrunch, please do your homework with real engineers and others that have worked with her. You will find that while she is bright, she is a bully and a tyrant that is just plain mean. Her carefully crafted image, assisted by PR handlers paid by shareholders to further it, creates empty admiration from those that don’t really know her, but many of those that have worked with her are truly suffering and can’t wait to vest and get out. She’s smart, a great presenter and nice and charming to industry pundits, the media, and other outsiders, but she’s quite a different person to the people’s lives she’s affecting.
I’d also add that while others have used the Steve Jobs-is-also-an-asshole justifcation for her behavior at Google, unlike Marissa he’s a real company founder that has continuously innovated market-leading new products over several decades – not someone who latched onto an already successful innovation after it was conceived. Other than search, Google hasn’t really had that many (any?) runaway product successes that she has created. In fact, quite the opposite. For example, her failure to create a Google Video product that users loved meant that Google had to pay hundreds of millions for YouTube. The good stuff from Google comes from others that aren’t subject to her regime. At Apple, Steve Jobs and his team create new markets and products people love. Marissa Mayer is no Steve Jobs, not even close.
The real innovators and founders of Google (Larry and Sergey) are simply not as fond of media attention and self-promotion as Marissa, and unfortunately for us, she’s more than happy to fill the vaccum and claim the glory at the expense of others.
Wow! There is some strong hate in your post. She saw the opportunity and seized it. I am not surprised by your comments. I am sure most of it is true. However, you have to remember her peers ALLOW her to do the those things and Google video just points out that she is not afraid to fail. Furthermore, you keep pointing out that she is really smart. So, the is in the position for more than one reason.
This is perhaps the most balanced summary of Marissa that I’ve seen written anywhere. As someone who had worked with her at Google for a number of years, I can attest that she is extremely sharp and provides thoughtful and excellent product advice, but her mercurial attitude isn’t one that inspires confidence in a leader.
She can be alternately spring sunshine or a hurricane to the same people over a period of days or even a few hours, and it’s very difficult for individuals or teams to know where they stand with her. Needless to say, it can make life supremely frustrating.
I do think that her ability to micromanage has been seriously compromised given her endless photoshoots and public appearances, but it doesn’t appear that she wants to trade off one for the other, and that really hurts since it slows down decision-making considerably.
And yes, Larry and Sergey remain the main product visionaries at the company.
I know her and agree with you 100%
This Googler is spot on. The Glamour piece is just more of her constant self promotion and carefully created media image fabricated by her PR team. Note that none of the other Google execs (many of whom have actually accomplished great things) engage in this sort of self promotion in the media. And the Glamour piece wasn’t even accurate, almost giving her credit for products like Gmail and Google Earth, when Gmail was actually created by Buchheit and Google Earth was the acquisition of Keyhole. I would expect TechCrunch to know better.
I want to know what her are butthole taste like?
I seriously doubt she codes all night long… what a load of crap! She hadn’t dated Larry, I doubt she would even be at Google.
cute good .. lovely for codes
the reality is that most people in the limelight work hard to get and stay in… the limelight. i love the concept of the accidental media star… oh little old me, why are you paying attention to me, i’m just a hard working cute engineer. she probably is hard core and machiavellian but she’s clearly good at self-promotion and stroking the right people. we all know that some of the most successful people are political and not the smartest. she does not approach the level of larry fortenky (remember liz taylor’s carpenter husband) but she clearly serves at the pleasure of Larry and Sergey. Live with it. What’s funny to me is all of these stellar “startup execs” seldom leave to join a startup again. They know how lucky they got and seldom want to chance fate again. we’ll see with her. meanwhile, glamour magazine? who cares? they will be bankrupt like all the other print magazines soon. maybe she’ll be the last winner.
Any Googler how much this lady still writes code? Seems like a waste of time for a VP that has to approve EVERYTHING that comes out of Google. There has to be better programmers than her in Google… that would be a better use of resources.
She doesn’t code much for the company. Most of her time is spent in various meetings, media events and press shoots.
God bless Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
She’s hot.
Intelligence is sexy.
Listening to Marissa talk about Google search on the crunchbase page reminds me of when Google was just a new, unheard of search engine. It’s great to see Google hold onto the early Google’rs who’ve helped it become what it is today.
I would say she’s cute. Period.