Marissa was in charge of search and user experience but now focuses on consumer products, primarily local geographic products e.g. Google Maps, Earth, Street View etc. Contextual discovery is a huge project that they’re working on and hope to announce over the next year.

Having done search for 11 years, her current role is closely related to search but gives her an opportunity to be involved with engineering. She currently has around 1000 people underneath her or a few thousand when you include all of the flights and driving teams, so it’s fair to say that this is an area that Google takes very seriously and is heavily investing in.

Marissa admitted to being a heavy FourSquare user and whilst she believes that Latitude is useful, there are a smaller group that will actually feel comfortable using this service. It’s safe to assume that Google will be adding additional layers to make it useful to more people… looking at checkin rather than always on, which is what currently happens.

Having launched Latitude onto the iPhone and recently pulling it again, Larissa confirmed that it is something they want to roll out on the iPhone and are getting close to having it ready for launch.

There are 3 big acquisitions that there are rumoured to have failed including Yelp, Twitter and Groupon. Larissa stressed how the larger the company, how much harder it is to integrate them into your ecosystem. The strategy should be dependent on the company, leadership and how it compliments your existing proposition.

HotPot is a personalised recommendations engine, build into GMM (mobile maps for mobile) and places and social search on the web. This allows you to rate different services and restaurants etc, it then allows you to tell them who their friends are and it can start to make tailored recommendations for you. This is very much aimed at local businesses. Larissa confirmed that social is important to Google and has to be something that they do well, therefore they are careful to try and nurse this well.

Larissa states that the web is made up of 4 components – search, video, social and mobile. She says that Google are really good at 3 out of the 4, but they’re working really hard on the 4th. She confirmed that there is a lot of acquisition activity planned for the next year and oddly went on to add “you will have seen that there’s been a lot of acquisition activity over the past year, but you’ve probably been tracking that better than us”…. which would be concerning to say the least.

There are 100m+ users currently using Google Maps for mobile which is something that Larissa explains whilst showcasing the newest Android device. Using a pinching action, Marissa shows how they’re now using vector maps which means that with one swift swipe, you can change to 3D mapping or go panoramic to pan around 3D buildings or areas. The map also has a compas built in which changes the perspective depending on how you’re holding the phone. Using caching , there is also now the ability to continue to navigate through maps without an internet connection, this is done through intelligently prefected the information that they believe that you will need. They’re able to do this through reducing the amount of data that your phone needs to display a standard map – leaving additional data capacity for additional functionality. This phone is currently only as pre-order for purchase in the USA and UK.

For an iPhone fan, this is hard for me to say, but at this point, even I want one of these phones! They won me over, what can I say?

p.s. She announced the naked guy in Germany in the boot of his car was actually a hoax. Sorry to disappoint!

of course this is the dream for many of the founders – big dollar bills and a life of comfort with the potential of your app being rolled out to the mass market for whom you might not have been able to reach. however, I often wonder how that makes those founders feel. surely there has to be something a little bit sad about letting control of your baby, the project over which you’ve poured so many hours of work into and sleepless nights?

what about those who are kept on as part of the acquisition? to deal with the  shift in culture when you’re acquired by a huge company such as google or facebook can’t be easy. where changing things on the fly and staying nimble might be easy to do when you’re a tiny startup – this isn’t as easy when you have a big boat to turn.

i’m definitely one of the grumblers, that’s for sure. i love twitter as it is. i know that the ev and the good guys there need to make money from the service but i’d be sad to see it end it’s startup journey. heck, i joined back in 2006 when you could almost hear the tumbleweed. maybe that’s just me though… after all, you’re talking to the girl that cringes every time she hears it mentioned on radio one, feeling it seep away from what was cool with the tech crowd to part of the mainstream web activity of many teenieboppers.

my social media cap tells me it’s a good thing – it’s increased reach and mass appeal can only be good for brands, but the early adopter in me sheds a little tear. no matter what happens to twitter, if it enables me to stay connected to as many people as i currently am and the failwhale (god bless his soul) only makes the occassional appearance, i’ll continue to love it. i can’t help it, it’s almost part of me. i wish ev and the team the best for whatever decisions are having to be made at the moment.