Incoming Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announces pregnancy

Yahoo has hired 37-year-old Google veteran Marissa Mayer as its new CEO — and she's pregnant. 

Mayer was one of Google's earliest employees, GlobalPost reported earlier, and helped create such overwhelmingly popular products as Gmail, Google News and Google Images. 

Mayer's pregnancy was fully disclosed to Yahoo before the company hired her in June, and some commentators are hailing Yahoo's choice as a victory for women. Mayer disclosed her pregnancy to Fortune yesterday. Mayer is married to Zachary Bogue, a lawyer who has turned his hand to the startup world, according to his LinkedIn profile. 

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According to AllThingsD.com, her pregnancy was considered something of a non-issue by the hiring board. “It was not part of the consideration,” a source close to the situation told AllThingsD's Kara Swisher.

“Like every other professional woman, she has to weigh all the factors in doing her job and having a family.”

"They showed their evolved thinking," Mayer said of Yahoo's board in the Fortune piece. Mayer was slated to begin her role as CEO of Yahoo today, according to Fortune. 

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Although it's illegal for US companies to discriminate against pregnant women, hiring biases do still exist.

Mayer's relative youth makes her an even more remarkable choice for a major company like Yahoo.

Mayer told Fortune she intends to take only a small amount of maternity leave: "My maternity leave will be a few weeks long and I'll work throughout it."

Mayer herself appears quite content with her status as a female geek in a male-dominated industry: one of her favorite sayings, according to Slate, boils down to: “I’m not a girl at Google. I’m a geek at Google.” 

Mayer has impressive academic chops in addition to her corporate experience, holding a Bachelors of Science degree in Symbolic Systems and a Masters in Computer Science, according to Stanford's Ecorner website. After graduation, she worked at the UBS research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland, and also held a position at SRI International in California, added Stanford.