Liveblogging the Google Press Squeeze: Jonathan Rosenberg and Marissa Mayer talk
Google's back from break for its Press Squeeze. Journalist Om Malik says the wifi's down, so don't look for too much liveblogging. (But Phillip Lenssen has a great live-blog going at Google Blogoscoped.) So join me in remotely watching the live video feed.
Hoo boy. Senior VP Jonathan Rosenberg (pictured) starts by asking journalists to thank him for getting press day over before 5 PM EDT. Seriously, he tells them, "Someone's supposed to say 'Thank you.' You're welcome."
11:46: He talks about Google Earth. "How many of you have looked at your house? Come on, all of you have looked at your house."
11:47: VP Marissa Mayer takes over, thank God. (Oh — no, not "takes over" as in "reveals herself as a Cylon and laughs as bombs vaporize the press. "Takes over" as in "takes the podium.") I'll mock liveblog the rest after the jump.
11:51: Oh no! She hands it back to Jonathan!
11:53: Click-to-call: "That's gonna be a fundamental change in what the value of the advertisement is." Yeah, now the advertiser gets free prank calls.
11:55: Jonathan lists companies Google bought — Picasa, Keyhole, Blogger. Ouch, no mention of Measuremap, SketchUp, Writely, or that radio ad network?
11:56: Okay, Marissa's kind of charming. She's pacing a lot, though. And I think her spine's glowing.
11:58: She drops a shoe — Google Desktop's time between releases keeps halving, which means they're due for a release now. "Look for that in the release announcement section." So with this and the Google Health rumors, Marissa is Google's official product leaker.
12:02: Jonathan pushes Google Pack. (Ugh, they didn't drop that idea?) If anything's wrong with your computer, something in Google Pack will fix it. Nice rebranding, Jonathan — until one of the Google Pack components has a lousy release.
12:03: I really don't like this guy. Jonathan Rosenberg is kind of obnoxious.
12:04: "The power of maps and satellites" is now available on "your mobile device." If your mobile device is a Blackberry, which, admittedly, it probably is.
12:07: Oh cool, Google opens its zeitgeist to the press. "I hope your wireless is working," says Jon. "Oh — it's not. Um." Everyone at home enjoys some schadenfreude.
12:09: Marissa shows Google Gadgets — Google's gunning for its own Dashboard/Yahoo Widgets set. Google Desktop has a media player — drag and drop songs on it — and other rich applications integrated with Google products like Orkut.
Oh man, that's brilliant. Why build an OS when you can build a parasite?
12:15: Marissa announces Google Co-op: here's a full post about it.
12:27: Tom Foremski from news blog Silicon Valley Watcher asks his second question of the day. Something about Adsense and Adwords...as with his first question, he's muddled. Sit down, Tom.
12:32: Marissa and Jonathan explain that results clustering and drill-down usually doesn't help — not if you can nail the answer the first time. But sure, Google Co-op is the sort of clustering that may actually work.
12:33: "Pictures aren't searchable." Gee, Google, that's why you almost bought Riya before deciding you could program facial recognition on your own. That Riya-killer not coming along as well as you thought?