Meg Whitman was a successful marketing executive for a toymaking giant in 1998 when she took a big risk on a new game -- a fledgling online auction firm called eBay.

The gamble paid off, with Whitman working her way into the select ranks of leaders of an international Internet technology company with billions of dollars in annual revenues.

Not all of her bets were winners, however, with her campaign last year to become governor of California failing despite her pouring a record breaking $144 million of her own money into the effort.

On Thursday , 55-year-old Whitman stepped in to run Hewlett Packard on the heels of the ouster of Leo Apotheker as chief executive officer at the world's largest computer maker.

"Whitman can take orders," said analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group in Silicon Valley.

"With a strong leader on top of her, I actually think this might be able to work," he continued. "It is the only way it will work, because her skill set is wrong."

HP's chief executive is likely to subordinate to board chairman Ray Lane, who sets company strategy, according to the analyst.

Whitman will face the challenge of leading a global corporation that appears to have lost its way and the faith of investors.

Whitman is credited with maneuvering eBay safely past the infamous dot-com crash of 2000 to profitability while other Internet firms sank into ignominy.

"She is much of what eBay is right now because so much of the decision-making process has come from her," Enderle told AFP.

Whitman was born in Long Island, New York, to a businessman father and a homemaker mom. Whitman was the youngest of three children.

She enrolled in Princeton University in 1974 with plans to pursue a medical career, but switched to economics after a summer spent selling advertising for a college publication.

Whitman earned a masters degree in business administration from Harvard in 1979.

Her first job after college was in product branding for Procter and Gamble in the US state of Ohio, where she met and married a neurosurgeon.

The couple moved in 1981 to San Francisco, where she worked for a consulting firm before landing a job in the consumer products division of Walt Disney Corporation in 1989.

Whitman is credited with helping Disney acquire Discover magazine and with launching the iconic entertainment company's first store in Japan.

Whitman and her family moved to Boston after her husband accepted a job as co-director of a hospital brain tumor center there in 1992.

She worked at a shoe company then, four years later, became chief executive of Florists' Transworld Delivery (FTD).

Whitman helped transform FTD from a struggling cooperative into a profitable private firm, before leaving in 1997 to be a general manager at US toymaker Hasbro.

A year later a corporate headhunter wooed Whitman to the helm of eBay, a start-up launched by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar in the California city of San Jose in 1995.

Whitman initially dismissed the notion, explaining in a 2001 interview that "a no-name Internet company" didn't appeal to her.

A visit to the eBay offices changed her mind and she took the chief executive job in March of 1998. The company went public six months later.

Whitman overhauled the website's look, launched an advertising campaign and negotiated the acquisition of venerable San Francisco auction house Butterfield and Butterfield, moving eBay into fine art and collectables.

As part of an expansion into new markets, Whitman orchestrated the purchase of European online auction house Alando de AG.

Whitman is credited with expanding eBay's domain while maintaining a sense of community that keeps users loyal.

Whitman has managed controversies that include shill bidding to drive up prices of art and the online sales of Nazi memorabilia or endangered animal products.

Whitman was reportedly heeding users' advice in 2003 when she arranged for eBay to buy PayPal, an online financial transactions service that eBay uses for completing sales.

Under Whitman, eBay bought Internet telephony pioneer Skype and launched microlending website Microplace.com to funnel money to entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Whitman even made an unprecedented stand against Google.

The company yanked its advertising from Google as payback for the Internet search behemoth planning to promote PayPal rival Google Checkout near an annual gathering of eBay users last year.

Struggling HP names Meg Whitman CEO
New York (AFP) Sept 22, 2011 - Hewlett-Packard on Thursday named former eBay chief Meg Whitman its new president and chief executive officer, replacing Leo Apotheker at the helm of the world's biggest computer maker.

Whitman, 55, stepped down in 2008 at eBay, the Internet auction giant, and last year made an unsuccessful run to replace Arnold Schwarzenegger as California governor, losing to Democratic veteran Jerry Brown.

"We are fortunate to have someone of Meg Whitman's caliber and experience step up to lead HP," said Ray Lane, who was named executive chairman of the computer giant.

"We are at a critical moment and we need renewed leadership to successfully implement. Meg is a technology visionary with a proven track record of execution."

Among the changes at HP, Ray Lane has moved from non-executive chairman to executive chairman of the board of directors, and the board intends to appoint a lead independent director, a company statement said.

"These leadership appointments are effective immediately and follow the decision that Leo Apotheker step down as president and chief executive officer and resign as a director of the company," the California group said.

In the statement Whitman said: "I am honored and excited to lead HP. I believe HP matters -- it matters to Silicon Valley, California, the country and the world."

The shakeup comes with HP struggling for direction despite its leadership in the PC business.

Katy Huberty, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, said the change was "a step towards regaining credibility with investors" but warned that "the path to a full recovery of investors' faith in management and the company's earnings power will take several quarters, if not longer."

Huberty said HP still faces "formidable challenges" as consumers shift away from PCs.

She said Whitman "brings strong technology industry relationships and leadership experience at a fast growing technology company but will need to prove to investors that she can make similar smart strategic decisions while running a much larger, more complex business" than at eBay,

Apotheker, a veteran of German business software giant SAP, took over HP in November and has been refocusing the company on software and cloud services -- offering applications and storing data services over the Internet.

But HP shares have fallen more than 40 percent since Apotheker replaced Mark Hurd, who resigned following a sexual harassment accusation.

HP shares plunged 20 percent on a single day last month after Apotheker announced a dramatic strategic shakeup at the world's top personal computer maker that includes spinning off its PC business.

HP announced on August 18 it was exploring a spin-off of its PC unit and buying British enterprise software company Autonomy for $10.24 billion as it refocuses on software and technology solutions.

In a further move away from the consumer space, HP said that it was stopping production of its TouchPad tablet computer, its rival to Apple's iPad, and phones based on the webOS mobile operating system acquired from Palm last year for $1.2 billion.

HP began laying off employees in its webOS unit on Tuesday.

Analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group in Silicon Valley said a key to the shakeup is that Ray Lane will be "a chairman with authority."

Lane "is the guy running HP but doesn't want to do it full time so he brought in a more traditional CEO. Now, we have a CEO who is in effect a subordinate to the chairman.

"Whitman can take orders... With a strong leader on top of her I actually think this might be able to work."