Disrupt Backstage Pass: Google's Marissa Mayer Talks Serendipity (And Dodges The Apple Question)
Hey, this is Jason K. with TechCrunch TV. And I am here with Marissa Mayer. Again, I actually just got a chance to interview her earlier this month. But now I have another chance to ask more questions about all the cool local and other products that you guys are working on. And once again, thank you for coming here to TechCrunch Disrupt.
No problem. I love TechCrunch Disrupt. It's just a really great opportunity for entrepreneurs, and it's just also amazing to see all these launches. I just love that there's this launch vehicle that really helps get companies going.
It's definitely it's exciting. So, here's a question that Mike didn't really touch on at all, and I'm not sure how much you're totally going to get into this, but there's been speculation that Apple is going to do some stuff around maps. There is a lot of controversy as far as location and WiFi data recently, and as part of that, Apple responded indicating that they were doing something related to traffic mapping.
And I'm wondering what's going to change, if anything, for Google's strategy if one day a significant segment of the mobile market, in other words all the iPhones out there and iPod Touches, stopped using Google Maps powered product, and transitions over to something that's controlled by Apple? Is there any game plan there, I'm sure there is?
Well iIthink I'm not going to speculate as to some of our competitors, but I will say that one thing that we're really learning is that maps is a huge part of the mobile ecosystem. Today we announced we have 200 million active users of Google maps for mobile.
And we actually now are seeing crossover on the weekends. What I mean by that is that we see more traffic from mobile than desktop maps on the weekends. In June we think that is going to crossover permanently . We know that's a really big part of it.
That said, we're really proud of some of the innovations that we've been able to roll out. Things like latitude, but also things like Vector maps. It's not just about tiled maps anymore.
Which aren't actually on the iPhone as far as I know.
That's right. And so...
The iPhone map is not as good.
No, the vector maps, they're beautiful, they're fast, there're one one hunderd of the data. And the other nice thing, that in addition to being able to really quickly drag and drop and move around, because were transmitting mass data we can do interesting things like cashing the map around you, so if your connection suddenly fails, you're not lost sitting there looking at the blue dot in the middle of an area that isn't filled in, and so there's just a lot of potential.
So here's another question that's actually been especially important to me out here in New York. I noticed that identifying exactly where I am is not working so well in New York City. I've got my wifi enabled and I know Google has a very powerful data base as far as associating were you are using the wifi hotspots that are available.
Is there some other technology that I'm not aware of? Or something that is coming down the line that will be able to improve on these wifi hotspots? Is this sort of something that is going to improve overtime as you get more hotspots in your database?
I think that the hotspots are something that will help. New York city's particularly challenging because of the tall buildings and the signal and the surround is also hard to get a signal into a really tall building and it can drain the battery. things like that, and do they really understand where a person is when they say find me and show me on the map?
That's actually reasonably hard to do.
Right.
But one of the things here is really about inputs, and so, you know, we really hope that the users check in. We have loyalty offers in order to promote more people doing that. The other value in check-ins is it actually causes person to say.
I'm here Actually, I'm here, and we understand them, what that signal looks like. So then later when someone else is there, we have a better chance of getting it right. And so there really is like a lot of times in these types of systems where they need to learn. All we're talking about is really the learning problem, they need a lot of input.
I wanna make sure I'm clear on that. So, these explicit check-ins could eventually help you who even who aren't explicitly checking in.
That's right.
It will just makes the database better. We'll say we have a vague idea and these coordinates seem to match with this person who explicitly checked in there. Right.
That 's right. For example, like, spelling on Google. Today our spell-check is so good because more people mispelled before you. They mispelled and they figured out howDid I get it right? We learned off of that pattern, and now we are really good at spell checking. Same thing, right? If we could guess where you are, but now that you told us means that we're more likely to get it right for the next person.
So, one of the things you talked about on the panel earlier was about this notion of having serendipitous suggestions based on where you are. And I know you're not going to be able to go into too much detail here, but as far as the timing on when would we might expect this sort of thing? Are we talking long term, like it's going to be years before the data is there, or is this something we might see this year or next year, we're going to start having our Android phones say like, "check this out." Or-
I think it's probably inside of a two year horizon.
OK.
Because, one of the reasons I moved from Search to what we call "Geo" is that- I just think there's something really special happening. With location, with mobile phones, we can just do things that we couldn't do before, because we can understand so much more about what's happening with a person. Where are they?
Is this some place where they are frequently? Is it somewhere that they only are very occasionally? And also it's getting a little bit of contacts and what other things may have been doing. These are making really good suggestions, understanding social context. All of these different pieces, and so a lot of the building blocks you need are in place, and I think this is something that is going to happen quickly.
Once it does start making this connections again this may not be something you can get into, do you think they're going to be more subtile in the sense that you'll open a browser and it will say like, I don't know, there'll be a link that's at the top of the ten blue links, it's nearby, as opposed to a popup when you open your phone that says "check this out now."
I think it's so new that it's hard to speculate on what the right UI is. But I do think that a lot of times with a new medium you really need to start out somewhere more explicit rather than less explicit. It's sort of interesting. I haven't gotten to go to a show this time but I like Broadway musicals.
I mean. I'm going to see a Broadway musical. Actually, I don't really like the revivals. The only thing that I don't like the revivals is I gonna have to be super explicit. The thing with the look, like they have a whole scene change were someone says like will I ever see him again?
Right, Right.
And I do think the same is true with technology, when you are designing a new interface. At least in the beginning so people understand, what are you doing, why are you doing it, what does it mean for me? You need to be more explicit. Then later you can be more subtle. So exactly the right way to leave it in I don't think we quite understand yet.
And we need to still figure that out, but I do think that, at least in the beginning, just to make sure people really understand what's going on, because we want to be very clear and transparent with users. It probably will be more explicit.
Great, alright so I think I'm being that I'm are out of time, thank you so much for joining us once again and for coming to TechCrunch Disrupt.
Thank you very much for having.
Last week at TechCrunch Disrupt, Google VP of Location and Local Services Marissa Mayer took the stage for an interview with our own Michael Arrington, where they discussed everything from Google’s mobile growth to Mayer’s investment strategy. A few minutes after the interview, I had the chance to ask her a few more questions about Google’s approach to mobile and local. It’s only been a few weeks since I interviewed Mayer about Google’s two pillar approach to local, but I still had plenty of questions.
The first thing I asked: what happens if and when Apple decides to swap out the Google Maps application that ships with every iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad in favor of something that it built in-house (Apple has confirmed that it’s working on an improved traffic database, and has also quietly acquired some mapping-related startups).
Unsurprisingly, Mayer mostly skirted the question � instead she pointed out how huge Google Maps’s audience is, with some 200 million active users on its Mobile products alone. She also mentioned some of the innovations that Google has made recently with Maps, including the new vector-based tiles that require 1/100th the data (the iOS version of Maps doesn’t take advantage of this feature).
Next, I asked if there were any technologies coming up that would help phones more accurately determine your location. Because while the Wifi/GPS combo works pretty well in most places, reliability takes a nose-dive whenever you’re in a dense city like NYC.
Mayer says that the Wifi hotspot database that Google has been building out will help with this, because it will improve over time. This is one reason why Google is going to be pushing users to explicitly check-in using Latitude ��in addition to providing a new channel to engage with consumers, these check-ins also help Google improve its database. The system may not know your exact GPS coordinates, but if if someone with the similar signals previously checked in at In-N-Out Burger, there’s a good chance that’s where you are. Mayer likens the system to the powerful spell checker that often pops up in Google search.
Finally, I asked about serendipitous suggestions on mobile phones, which Mayer has previously said she’s excited about. Mayer says that she thinks we’ll see these “inside of a two year horizon”. The UI for what these suggestions will look like is still TBD, but it sounds like initially they’re be pronounced rather than subtle.
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