MarissaMayer
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Yahoo appoints former Google exec Marissa Mayer as CEO
As a top executive and employee number 20 at Google, there wasn't necessarily a tremendous opportunity for growth at the Mountain View search giant. That may explain Marissa Mayer's recent decision to jump ship in favor of joining Yahoo as the company's chief executive -- a role the former Google VP of Local, Maps and Location Services plans to assume tomorrow. Mayer joined Google way back in June of 1999 as the company's first female engineer, and remained employed until her resignation earlier today. There's no question that Yahoo will be in good hands -- its new CEO does in fact have a degree in computer science -- but the company's future still remains in question, following a clear inability to catch up to its chief competition.
Google offers its own brief history of search (video)
Wondering how we got from there to here? It's not the most exhaustive or objective history, but Google has released a new video today that it describes as the "evolution of search in six minutes." It includes contributions from the likes of Google's Ben Gomes, Amit Singhal and Marissa Mayer, and it traces the company's search history from its beginnings as a research project in 1996 to its current technologies like instant results and search by image or voice. While specifics are expectedly light, it does also offer a few hints of what Google sees as the future of search, including Amit Singhal's dream to build a "Star Trek computer." See the whole thing for yourself after the break.
Google VP lays down mobile stats, boasts 150 million Maps users
Care for a cup of Google data, anyone? At SXSW, the vice president of location services, Marissa Mayer, stated some interesting facts about the state of all things mobile at the Goog. Most notably, the company provides its map service to 150 million users. Just to give you an idea of how many peeps that is -- it's about half the number of individuals in America. Crazy, we know. What's more, Mayer claimed that Google Maps guided users 12 billion miles per year and that its latest build of the app saves people an average of two days worth of travel time each year. Another bit worth noting is how the company feels about Google Maps for iPhone. "We like being the default provider, but we'd like to get some of these updates out to a broader audience. That's still a debate / question we're considering." Updates? An actual Google Maps application that works as a GPS on an iPhone? Wake us up when iOS 5 is previewed, or we can just keep dreaming.
