Looking at Google’s past and future: a lecture with Marissa Mayer

We waited for the doors to open as if waiting at the entrance to an amusement park with our faces trying to peer through the gates. Our mission: sit as close to the stage as possible. But this wasn’t a rock concert. Our excitement came from the chance  to see a lecture from Marissa Mayer, VP of Google’s Consumer Products. This woman changed the world. She started a virtual revolution and makes magic come to life every day. And we got to hear her speak in a small, intimate, college auditorium.

Innovations at the Googleplex

She appeared and shared her “Innovations at the Googleplex.” We learned about her first engineering project for Google (hanging the sign outside their first office building on University Avenue in Palo Alto) and where Google is headed (answering the question: Can a car drive by itself?)

Search activities of the future. Already, using the Google Goggles app, you can take a photo of a famous location or even a person, and conduct a search. No text is required. Someday, you will be able to make contextual searches. For example, you will take a photo of a bird and Google will help determine the species of the bird based on your location and the types of birds likely to be found in that region, as well as the time of year when birds could migrate to a location.

Auto translations. Currently, you can use Google Translate to translate text into another language. The challenges with this comes not only from text, but the direction of the text or the characters used. Even with these challenges, translations occur. Now imagine if your voice could be translated.  They are developing the ability to say a phrase such as, “Where is the nearest pharmacy?” into your phone, and this gets translated into another language so you can play the phrase back to someone. Then you will record their answer and it will be translated back in your own language. This ability to auto-translate language would be a massive game changer across the globe. With Google, this idea can become reality in our future. Traveling around the world will never be the same.

Driving a car without a human behind the wheel. This activity requires the quintessential search engine: taking all the available data from sensors and interpreting it to get the right decision. It isn’t happening yet, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t. Google Maps changed the way we view locations around the globe, a car driving itself may be possible as well.

Q&A with Marissa Mayer

When she finished the lecture, she answered questions from the audience. One brave college student asked, “Can I give you my resume?” Graciously, she said “We’re Google. We’re always on the lookout for new people to hire.” The crowd went wild, but I’m not surprised by her answer. If Google plans to make these ideas for the future become our reality, they’ll need an outstanding team and they’ll find their future team members everywhere.

Since she was able to share these innovations, they aren’t secrets. It is only a matter of time before they become our reality and our lives will be changed, once again, by Google’s innovations for the future.

When Eileen Calandro isn’t wishing her phone could translate “tween language,” she’s the Chief Mom Connector of Mom Central. You can read about other things she tries to cope with on her personal blog at calandroclan.com and connect with her on Twitter at @MomCentralChat and @calandro5.

Eileen Calandro