SUNNYVALE, Calif. (AP) - As a top executive at Google for the past 13 years, Marissa Mayer played an instrumental role in developing many of the services that have tormented Yahoo as its appeal waned among Web surfers, advertisers and investors.

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Now, Yahoo is turning to its longtime nemesis to fix everything that has gone wrong while Google Inc. has been cementing its position as the Internet's most powerful company.

Mayer, 37, will tackle the imposing challenge Tuesday when she takes over as Yahoo's fifth CEO in the past five years.

The surprise hiring announced late Monday indicates Yahoo still believes it can be an Internet innovator instead of merely an online way station where people pass through to read a news story or watch a video clip before moving on to more compelling Internet destinations.

"I just saw a huge opportunity to have a global impact on users and really help the company in terms of managing its portfolio, attracting great talent and really inspiring and delighting people," Mayer said during a Monday interview with The Associated Press.

Like her predecessors, Mayer will have to come up with an effective strategy to compete against the juggernaut that Google has become and the increasingly influential force that Facebook Inc. is turning into as more people immerse themselves in its social network.

Both Google, the Internet's search leader, and Facebook have been beating Yahoo Inc. in the battle for Web surfers' attention and advertisers' marketing budgets. As Yahoo has lagged in that pivotal race, so has its financial performance and stock price. The stock has been slumping since Yahoo Inc. balked at a chance to sell itself to Microsoft Corp. for $47.5 billion, or $33 per share, in May 2008.

Yahoo shares closed Monday at $15.65, and haven't traded above $20 since September 2008.

"If she can pull this off and turn around Yahoo, it will make her legacy," Gartner Inc. analyst Allen Weiner said of Mayer. "Yahoo's iconic yodel has been missing for a long time. Her mission will be to bring that yodel back."

This will be the first time that Mayer has run a company as she steps out of the long shadow cast by the Google's ruling triumvirate - co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, along with Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.

Although she had her responsibilities at Google narrowed two years ago, Mayer is still widely considered to among the Internet industry's brightest executives. A Wisconsin native, Mayer is a mathematics whiz with a sponge-like memory and a keen eye for design.

Mayer joined Google in 1999 as its 20th employee and went on to play an integral role in helping Page and Brin exploit their online search technology to outmaneuver Yahoo at a time when it was still the larger of the two companies. Now, it takes Google a little more than a month to generate as much revenue as Yahoo does in an entire year.

During Google's rise, Mayer helped oversee the development and design of the company's popular email, online mapping and news services. She also became a topic of Silicon Valley gossip during Google's early years while she dated Page for three years. They have since gotten married to other people.

"We will miss her talents," Page, now Google's CEO, said in a statement.