• Guardian, Thursday, July 9, 2009 12:15 PM

Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of search product and user experience, talks shop with the Guardian's Charles Arthur. She says a few familiar things, like "we've only just got started on search," and reminds us that the first iteration of search was all about text on pages, while the second stage, which we're in now, involves humans, who help add context to images and pages, making the Web appear more knowledgeable. The third stage of search, she says, will use sensors built into devices. Smartphones are a good, early example of this, she says.

Then there's real-time search, a space where Twitter is the undoubted leader. As Arthur says, "although it's emphatically unsaid, it's clear from studying the reactions of Mayer - and other senior people at Google -- that the little company has unsettled its bigger, broader rival."

Says Mayer: "We think the real-time search is incredibly important and the real-time data that's coming online can be super-useful in terms of us finding out something like, you know, is this conference today any good? Is it warmer in San Francisco than it is in Silicon Valley? You can actually look at tweets and see those sorts of patterns, so there's a lot of useful information about real time and your actions that we think ultimately will reinvent search."

Did you catch that? Yep, Mayer said "tweets". Arthur notes that "It's the only time in the conversation, and the half-hour talk Mayer later gives to an audience of entrepreneurs, where she mentions by name any rival product or brand."

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