Man-years and fisheye screenshots: Marissa Mayer on ABC's "Ahead of the Curve"
What did Google threaten offer ABC News to score a "Google does much more than search" puff piece? (Why else would "Ahead of the Curve" willingly run this story, um, behind the curve?)
The video's here. Valleywag show notes are below.
0:10: Host John Donvan intros, "Welcome back to Ahead of the Curve." Sweet, sweet irony. Giving Marissa Mayer media attention is so last season.
0:25: "You joined Google in 1998..." Did she? There goes the "Blade Runner Theory" — replicants only live four years. She must be a Cylon.
0:45: Marissa lets some Valley-girl accent slip in when she says "entire time." Human after all?
1:50: "Things like books, that often take man-years to create." Sure, it's a real term, but come on, "man-years"? She might as well say, "Work is slow on this planet, thanks to your 'books' and your 'printing.'"
More analysis and petty remarks after the jump.
Google's First Female Engineer [ABC News]
Play video [ABC News]
2:20: "When you're buying a home, or planning a vacation," people use Google Earth, says Mayer, which ABC rewrites as "Whether planning vacations and needing a bird's-eye view of the Eiffel Tower [...] Google Earth is just part of people's lives today." Okay, I'm with them on this one, because before Google Earth, people didn't know what the Eiffel Tower looked like. (It looks skewed and bizarrely Escher-esque, according to Google Earth.)
3:00: The requisite screenshot, half-heartedly jazzed up with a fisheye effect. Props to the art director who thought that up. "Ooh, ooh, I heard that if you type 'miserable failure'..."
3:20: "We've never been outwardly focused on competitors," says the lady who accused Microsoft of unfair practices yesterday.
Overall tip to Marissa: Work on your spontaneous giggle. You've nearly got us convinced it's natural.
Coming up: Is Marissa Mayer Cylon Number Six?