Live post from LeWeb: Marissa Mayer, VP, Prod­uct Man­age­ment, Google and MG Siegler, Gen­eral Part­ner, Crunch­Fund, inte­viewed by MG Siegler of TechCrunch

This is Marissa Mayer’s fourth con­sec­u­tive year speak­ing at LeWeb. MG Siegler inter­views her in a less con­fronta­tional man­ner than Mike Arring­ton last year, but alas nei­ther he nor Mike got any stun­ning new devel­op­ments from Google. Why is it that some com­pa­nies like Apple pre­serve the wow fac­tor, while oth­ers like Google don’t? Per­haps this is why MG asked her “Is Google more afraid of becom­ing like Apple or like Microsoft?” Tellingly, Marissa skirted the question.

Cur­rently, she is in charge of “local” at Google, includ­ing maps and deals. This includes indoor maps. Indoor spaces are equally impor­tant to out­side spaces. Shop­ping malls, ari­ports, and other large spaces can be very con­fus­ing, so Google is tack­ling the prob­lem with another offer. Not only are there indoor maps, but Google can place you within that map by using wi-fi.

Local feeds social and social feeds local, so Google+ has a big role to play in loca­tion based ser­vices. From the lessons learned dur­ing the launch of Buzz, they under­stood much more about pri­vacy and built this into Google+

The role of a prod­uct man­ager is not to have all the answers, but to under­stand all the needs and bring together a coher­ent vision.

Etc and so on …