John Dovan from ABC News interviewed Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice President. The interview doesn't include novel facts, but it's interesting to see Google saying that the search was just the initial step in their evolution. Now Google means more than search: Google Books, Google Earth."It's really amazing how fast change happens, because as recently as a year ago, Google Earth didn't exist," Marissa Mayer says. "Now it's become a standard thing that people just expect." But before Google Earth exist, there was Keyhole, a company founded in 2001 and bought by Google in October 2004.
Marissa also says that Google was thinking about book search and satellite imagery back in 1999, which is kind of hard to believe if you take a step back and look at Google's homepage from 1999.
Valleywag notices another contradiction: "We've never been outwardly focused on competitors," says the lady who accused Microsoft of unfair practices yesterday.
Overall, Google wants to be perceived as a company that delivers more than web search and will probably focus on that in the months to come.
