Google's Services Queen
For anyone interested in the inner workings of Google, a must-read is BusinessWeek's story
on Marissa Mayer. While Mayer certainly has a low profile - at least until
the BW came on the scene - she plays a key role in the launch of new
Google services. As director of consumer Web products, Mayer has a
mandate to work with Google's engineers to select the most promising new services.
This is a huge job given Google has developed a culture of innovation
that has grown exponentially as its workforce closes in on 5,000
people. The focus on the 30-year-old Mayer, Google's 20th employee, is
interesting for a couple reasons: it's refreshing to see a women
holding an important role in a high-profile, high-growth technology company, and it's
encouraging to see that co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin
apparently don't feel the need to micro-manage all aspects of Google's
strategy - which can be a huge entrepreneurial weakness. In addition to
Mayer, I'd like to see a profile on the person who heads
Google's M&A unit given I believe the company may be poised to make a
huge deal within the next year.
In other Mayer-related news, John Battelle
has a post today that talks about Google's indexing efforts. Google now
claims its index is three times bigger than its rivals. While bigger is
better, Battelle hopes Google's huge indexing advantage will put the
focus back on relevance.
September 27th, 2005 at 1:50 pm
She's worth profiling. Google have been the fastest moving instigator of new products anywhere over the last year. All the new products have had that ahhh! factor.