I have never been pregnant so I am not going to comment on Marissa Mayer's condition or how it relates to her new job at Yahoo. I have never been CEO of a multi billion dollar company either, but that is not going to stop me from commenting on what I am sure is going to be one of the most interesting meetings in the near future -- between Marissa Mayer and Steve Ballmer.
Microsoft and Yahoo have a complicated past and a complicated present and likely a complicated future. This first meeting is going to be interesting for a number of reasons not the least of which is the way that Ballmer has targeted Google so intensely and for so long. Now he is going to be sitting across the table from the devil herself, and she is exactly what he needs -- a smart experienced person with design sensibility and vision.
While he is realizing how she could help him, she is probably doing the same. I don’t know anything about her willingness or ability to use brute force to crash through barriers, but Ballmer’s tendency to do so could be quite useful to her.
And they both have the same problem -- their own companies. They each have an opportunity to use the strength of the other to influence their own teams. Marissa can get Steve to beat her cranky board members into submission and Steve can get Marissa to get his team to stop fighting with each other and focus on the challenge at hand.