Yahoo is betting its fortunes on the proven talent of a former Google executive, Marissa Mayer, who for more than a decade has steered the Internet giant's search division into the most successful web-based business in the world.

Ms Mayer, according to The New York Times, parted ways with her Google colleagues on Monday to take on her new role as Yahoo CEO, which she confirmed to the U.S.-based publication was offered to her in June.

She starts immediately on Tuesday, facing the huge task of possibly reinventing a company that was one of the giants of the tech world in the early 1990s.

The present-day Yahoo is a remote shadow of its past as the company grapples with flagging finances and leadership crisis, with its last chief executive, Scott Thompson, only able to hold on to his post more than four months.

What exactly drew Ms Mayer, who was credited for the incredible growth of Google's main product offerings, to Yahoo and abandon a firm that is inarguably one of the pillars in the Silicon Valley?

First, the new Yahoo chief declared on Twitter that she was excited to assume the top role in the company that made its name while she was still gaining her top-notch education.

"I'm incredibly excited to start my new role at Yahoo tomorrow," Ms Mayer was reported by The Associated Press (AP) as saying on her Twitter page shortly after appointment was made public.

She hinted too that jumping over was relatively easy since she'll be the new captain of "one of the best brands on the Internet."

Analysts said Ms Mayer's entry to Yahoo was amply backed by her solid credentials that further gained heft while serving at Google's most profitable business - the search division.

Yahoo reportedly sought her services on those merits as company Chair Fred Amoroso admitted to AP that Ms Mayer was tapped for her "unparalleled track record in technology, design, and product execution."

That also explains why interim CEO Ross Levinsohn, who reportedly was more adept in the marketing department than in developing new products, was not retained by the Yahoo board following his short fill-in role when Mr Thompson resigned in May.

The NY Times said Ms Mayer has been one of the prominent faces of Google and her hard work has been key ingredients in catapulting numerous Google products into considerable success.

But her exit from the Internet giant serves as Ms Mayer's way of taking on bigger roles, most likely to become relatively equal to the more high-profile achievements of fellow Silicon Valley female senior executives, the U.S. publication said.

Her further ascent, however, greatly hinges on how well she will redraw Yahoo's business road map, turn it around and please the company's investors, which for the last seven years have been wanting to see the right formula that restore the tech firm's old glorious days.

The Mayer choice, according to venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, was a solid testament to Yahoo's resolve "to pursue a product-centric strategy."

Mr Andreessen told Reuters that Ms Mayer would have a tough job ahead of her, foremost of which is to reverse the losing course of Yahoo and to provide a leadership figure that has been absent in the company for the past half-decade.

But one man had prominently accomplished such task, he added, when Steve Jobs rescued Apple from the edge of extinction by returning as the company's chief during the middle part of the 1990s.

Should Ms Mayer succeed where her predecessors at Yahoo failed, she'll effectively blot out the disappointing episodes that had plagued the Internet firm in the past few years.