Google's Marissa Mayer will try to save Yahoo as CE)

Longtime Google executive Marissa Mayer will become CEO of Yahoo, thrusting the prominent 37-year-old executive into a public highwire act as she tries to turn around the languishing company.

"There is a lot to do and I can't wait to get started," Mayer said in the official announcement.

Mayer's eagerness aside, the move is a gamble for her. Employee number 20 at Google, Mayer became a key executive at the company, overseeing search products and user interface for five years and eventually taking over local and location services. In 2010, she ascended to Google's elite operating committee.

Mayer's personal wealth from pre-IPO Google stock has allowed her to buy a penthouse in San Francisco's Four Seasons along with a home in well-to-do Palo Alto and a posh Vogue wedding. There's little doubt she could remain at Google, or quit conventional work entirely, and live in considerable comfort. She doesn't need to try and revive Yahoo.

"Marissa has been a tireless champion of our users," Google CEO Larry Page writes. "We  will miss her talents at Google."

By the end of 2011 Mayer's influence seemed to be waning. She was among several executives pushed out of the operating committee, Reuters reported, and wasn't visible at Google I/O this past June despite having keynoted in prior years.

Still, it's likely Mayer could have continued to make significant contributions at Google if she'd chosen to hang in. Her oversight of local put Mayer in charge of a crucial crossroads for Google.

At Yahoo, Mayer is rolling the dice on a much more daunting challenge. The company's C-suite has been a revolving door and Yahoo has bled top talent.

"Marissa has the energy and drive Yahoo needs," says YCombinator's Paul Buchheit, who worked closely with Mayer during the creation of Google's Gmail. "I can't wait to see what she does with the company."

A former Yahoo executive who left the company in recent years says Mayer will have to move quickly to repair Yahoo's reputation and bolster its flagging momentum. "Her joining Yahoo! is like a bomb," this person says. "The 'shock and awe' will briefly destabilise the legacy elements and parties that have been holding the company back. She needs to use her first 100 days aggressively to confront entrenched interests."

Mayer's ascent is a sign that Yahoo will compete aggressively on technology development rather than retreating into becoming an online media company that merely sells advertising, says Morningstar analyst Rick Summer. That means going up against formidable competitors like Microsoft, Facebook -- and Mayer's former employer.

"Yahoo has had declining use in its communications services and not much mobile success," says Summer. "It is the polar opposite from Google... She'll need to lead a team that creates a few strong technology products that will engage users and stem the loss in Yahoo's search business."

Mayer certainly has the chops to lead tech product development. She helped oversee the development of Gmail, Google News and Google Images. She has a master's degree in computer science from Stanford and is famous for her data-driven approach to product decisions.

But in other ways the job will be an odd fit. For one, Mayer has no real professional experience outside of her six different jobs at Google, a sort of parallel corporate universe where the gusher of profits from contextual advertising has subsidised virtually all of the company's operations for more than a decade.

Also, Yahoo has for the past decade operated not like Google, which is obsessed with software development, but as a sort of media company. Since Terry Semel took the reins in 2001, Yahoo's leadership has focused on advertising and marketing initiatives over technical advancement (with the possible exception of Jerry Yang's brief stint as CEO). In 2009, Yahoo ceded its once-core search engine to Microsoft, whose servers began powering Yahoo searches.

Restarting Yahoo tech development might have great long-term potential, but in the meantime it's relatively low-tech display ads that keep the lights on at Yahoo. Mayer will need help to keep that lifeline strong.

If she does pull off an unlikely turnaround, of course, Mayer's reputation in Silicon Valley will be sterling. She'll join turnaround gods like Steve Jobs at Apple and Louis Gerstner at IBM in the top tier of tech's pantheon.

Former Yahoo employees say Mayer needs to get climbing now if she'll ever reach those heights.

"It's not like she needs the money," one wrote in a closed Facebook group for Yahoo alumni. "She has to honestly feel like she can turn this ship around after it's already hit the iceberg, which is a pretty monumental challenge."

iTunes in the Cloud brings movie redownloading to the UK

iTunes in the Cloud for movies has today launched in the UK and 36 other markets globally.

Apple launched iTunes in the Cloud earlier this year. The free service allows users to redownload content previously bought from iTunes. Although the US launch included movies as part of this offer, UK customers were limited to music, apps and TV shows.

As of today, movies finally now form part of that offer. If you have bought films from Apple in the past and deleted them either by mistake or to save disk space, you can down redownload them for no extra cost. This is a particular advantage to Apple TV users, as it means the tiny set-top box becomes a conduit for streaming all past movie purchases.

www.techbuz.net  understands that almost all movies are available for use with iTunes in the Cloud, with the remaining few due to go live shortly.

In Europe, the service is now available in the UK, Ireland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Other countries now supported include Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Cambodia and Sri Lanka.

Get the cheapest UK iPad: A buyer's guide

So you've decided you need an iPad, but your bank balance isn't having any of it, so you desperately need to find the cheapest way to get one.

Don't worry. Wired.co.uk is here to look after you.

We have scoured the pages of Apple's website, the tariffs of the five UK networks that are offering iPad data-only tariffs, and fed it all into a big number-crunching machine. The result: we know the rock-bottom, most affordable ways to get a cheap iPad legitimately into your hands.

We've had to make a few assumptions -- the biggest being that you don't need more than 16GB of storage on the device itself, and that you're going to use it for 24 months before it becomes useless to you. Tweak the figures a little if you don't think that's true, though be aware that some of the contracts have 24-month minimum terms.

It's also worth saying a little more about the 3G packages on offer from the different networks. O2, Vodafone 3, T-Mobile and Orange all offer data bundles and a microSIM, but they're not created equal -- each has different little tweaks that make them better or worse than the others.

On the surface, Orange looks good because it comes with "unlimited" access to more than 150,000 Wi-Fi networks across Britain. But a fair usage policy limits access to those hotspots to 10GB per month -- this is Wi-Fi, for crying out loud. Why are there limits at all?

Before we give you the prices we need to know a little more about you. How much are you going to use your iPad, and where? If you're primarily thinking of buying the device for use in the home, and can't see any situations where you might want to take it somewhere else that doesn't have free Wi-Fi, then there's no point buying the model equipped with 3G access. If you do want 3G, then how much are you going to use it? Every single day, or maybe once a week?

Pick whichever category over the page applies to you best, and we'll point out your cheapest option -- you can bookmark that page to get back to just the prices quickly.

The housebound user
For users who just want the cheapest of the cheapest options. No 3G at all.
Limits: There isn't any 3G.
Data plan: None
Total cost over 24 months: £399
Effective monthly cost: £16.63

The light user
Very occasionally you'll take the iPad out of your house -- no more than once a fortnight.
Limits: We've costed the below such that you only use 3G once a fortnight, and you don't use more than 250MB each time. More use will cost you more.
Data plan: T-Mobile's PAYG Micro-Sim
Total cost over 24 months: £595
Effective monthly cost: £24.79

The connected user
A reasonable amount of usage, in case you want to get on the web from the train ride home.
Limits: 1GB per month, but you can use that whenever you want -- you can use a little bit every day if you like, rather than having to pay for a new chunk of data every time you use it. It's also a 1-month rolling contract, meaning you don't have to commit to a full two years of payment.
Data plan: Three's 1GB Pay Monthly Micro-sim
Total cost over 24 months: £679
Effective monthly cost: £28.29

The road warrior
For the all-consuming, data-hungry user who's almost never in range of Wi-Fi.
Limits: If what you want is bang-for-buck when it comes to data, you can't get better than Three's 24-month, £25-per-month that comes with a whopping 15GB of data. That's a price-per-month-per-gigabyte of £2.30, including the cost of the iPad itself -- far below its competitors. Of course, you need to ask yourself whether you're going to use all that data.
Data plan: Three's 15GB 24-month iPad 2
Total cost over 24 months: £829
Effective monthly cost: £34.54

So there you have it. The full range of possibilities. If you want to see our datasheet, which covers all offerings from all providers (that we found) then you can see it here, ordered by monthly cost. If it's an iPad you've got to have, then this is the cheapest you're going to get it.

Apple unveiled updates to its entire Mac laptop family all at once: MacBook Airs, MacBook Pros, and the new Retina Display Pro. What are the differences? Compare below

This year's lineup of Apple MacBooks remains split down the middle between thinner MacBook Airs and thicker MacBook Pros, both of which retain the same look as 2011 -- and, for that matter, 2010. Newly upgraded third-gen Intel processors, Nvidia graphics, and new ports like USB 3.0 are the chief new and notable additions, as well as price drops in the MacBook Air line.

A newcomer has also been added at the flagship high-end desktop-replacement level: the Retina Display 15-inch MacBook Pro, a completely redesigned laptop that functions as a fusion between beefier high-end systems and thinner laptops like the Air. At $2,199, it's priced to replace the 17-inch MacBook Pro