My notes and quotes below. Was an interesting insight into how Google operates and where the next big developments might be. Spoiled a bit by interviewer behaving like a spoilt child.

As ever, the quotes may not be exact, and unless otherwise indicated, the direct quotes are from things said by Marissa. Sorry if there are any minor inaccuracies, email me and I'll change if so.

• michael arrington starts asking loic awkward questions on stage about food and wifi. no need really. does arrington think he's voice of the 'le web' people or something?
• launching global zeitgeist for 2008... faster rising search terms, etc etc...
• "what is love" is one of the most asked questions worldwide
• "this is the first time that we've broken it down over 30 countries"
• "the global trends are interesting but time/country-specific trends are more so"
• launching a second product... iGoogle themes for causes... this is all a bit piecemeal isn't it?
• Arrington asks about Chrome browser
• Marissa asks how many people in room are using it as a default browser... 10 or 15 hands go up... not bad but she's disappointed
• promises moving Chrome out of Beta this year... Google and Linux versions
• arrington "why is it important to take chrome out of beta"
• we have two types of beta - "client-software betas" are shorter.. a lot of OEMs will not distribute beta software. where something is "server-side", like Gmail, beta is less-well defined. we'll keep things in beta if there are important advances we want to make.
• "Chrome will come out of Beta very very soon."
• Arrington asks about search-wiki.. describes it as an 'abomination'.. 'the really ugly stuff beside the search results'
• "it's just three little icons, don't get so worked up about it!" - goes on to describe the functionality
• "why did we do this? search needs to be more dynamic and more personalised"
• "this is a great way for us to experiment with both those factors"
• talks about how search is not iterative... you might make the same decision over time, but no context is restored
• "around 40% of searches are repeat searches" - individuals repeating the same queries
• arrington asks if people are going to get an option to opt-out
• "in time we will probably give people an option to turn the icons on/off".. "beginning of next year"
• "the default will be on because we want to drive participation"
• arrington asks how all of this aggregated data is being used
• "right now the search wiki results are not being used to influence wider search"
• "there is a possibility of us doing so - when we see really large signals, ie, a thousand people making the same deletion"
• arrington asks where search is going next... "is there a point where google has too much market share, has done too much?"
• "we welcome competition"
• "we have the basics, we have a pretty good ranking algorithm"
• talks about different search modes.. not restrained to laptops/keywords.. but search via voice, search from cars, etc etc
• talks about incorporating more rich media.. maps, video, books... into search results
• "we want to stitch together the best answer for our users"
• loic asks "when will we have good video search"... seesmic angle, clearly
• "speech to text is further along and more likely to see a breakthrough than face-recognition software"
• "youtube is making face-recognition more difficult.. there are so many more people in video than there were 10, 20 years ago" - ie, it used to be film stars only
• arrington asks how far away this stuff is
• "i think we will see considerable advances in the next five, ten years."
• talks about personalised search... usual caveat about being careful with users' data
• "we don't know what will fuel personalised search, but we think it will be one of the traits of the successful search tools of the future"
• "another part of personalisation is the social aspect"
• "the virtual world mirrors the real world... we want people to be able to get better recommendations through search"
• conversation about how poor local search is... "we think that's a big opportunity"
• questions from the audience
• question about "not being evil", china, etc...
• "we take privacy very seriously at google... user trust is very valuable" choice and transparency etc etc etc
• "we want to provide our service... we have a choice between engagement and estrangement... giving search to end users in china is a greater benefit... though we have a constant debate internally at google"
• rubbish question about "why are my suggestions for feedback not adopted"... loic intersects
• "We pride ourselves on innovation and some of the best suggestions come from our users"
• arrington "how many times a day does someone type google into the search box"
• marissa talks about how that can be a legitimate search "but we see it more than we expect"
• question about how google voice search is biased towards an american accent...
• marissa talks about how accent recognition is a wider problem... seems to be implying that the data set collected by google voice search is being used to improve speech-to-text recognition
• interesting question "how did you help the company scale and deal with extreme pressure"
• "on how do we pick people... vast array of different disciplines... one broad approach to recruitment... two principles... are they smart... do they get things done"
• "we're really looking for people who have a lot of fire and passion and are able to execute their ideas"
• "when you have a really good idea it just takes off... the scale was thrust upon us... we tried to adopt practices that we knew would scale... that attention to detail goes a long way... reduces friction"