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your privacy is an illusion
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Marissa Mayer
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your privacy is an illusion
superficial
What would Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's love child look like?
One in a while a Web application comes along that's so damn useful, even we'd invest in it. Facebook? Meh. MakeMeBabies, the site that lets you create ruddy-cheeked mashups from any two photos? Its diapers will be filled with nothing but spun gold. Here's what the site came up with from photos of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and girlfriend Priscilla Chan. After the jump, we give a few other notable couples the same treatment. Please do add your own in the comments with our image-upload feature — best and worst fake babies will win an as-yet-undetermined prize of nominal value! More »
geek love
In a week of gay weddings, where are Derek and Orkut, Marissa Mayer's best boyfriends?
Google engineer Orkut Buyukkokten, the one behind the eponymous social network, has gotten engaged to boyfriend Derek Holbrook, Valleywag's youngest-ever tipster tells us. The two are shown here, in coordinated outfits, with fabulous friend Marissa Mayer, the Google executive who greenlighted Orkut's site. Will the two get married this week, now that the California Supreme Court has made it legal? No word yet, but if Mayer serves as witness, we hope she'll wear something a bit less flashy. No one — not even Marissa — shows up the grooms at their own gay wedding. (Photo by Drew Altizer via SFluxe)
superficial
Scene from Marissa Mayer's birthday party
What does privilege look like? This year, it was renting out an entire movie theater for your friends. But two years ago, it was a cleancut white guys playing air-fiddle on tennis rackets while singing Alabama's "Song of the South" horrificly offkey at Google society gal Marissa Mayer's birthday party, a scene captured and posted on YouTube by investor Kevin Hartz. How do we know it's Marissa, since she doesn't appear in the video? Listen closely for the really, really goofy laugh.
rumormonger
Is Google about to swallow up Digg?
Google's cupcake princess, Marissa Mayer, and Kevin Rose, the playboy of the Webhead world, would make an awfully cute couple. Not romantically — the two are dating other people at the moment. But we hear Mayer is pushing hard for an acquisition of Rose's Digg, for a price below $200 million. Kara Swisher hinted a few days ago that the social news site, on which users "digg" or "bury" their favorite news headlines, might be on Google's shopping list. Mayer's goal: to use what Digg has learned to fix Google News which, while popular, doesn't make Google any money. (Digg CEO Jay Adelson would not comment on the sale rumor, but did disclose that he was having a "delicious" In 'N' Out burger for lunch.) More »
superficial
Marissa Mayer and friends on display at department store
The Palo Alto Neiman Marcus held a preview of the Oscar de la Renta fall collection for a San Francisco Symphony benefit, and we all know how much Google's Marissa Mayer loves her some de la Renta. So she showed up with boy toy Zach Bogue (far left) and Google senior UI designer Kerah Pelczarski (second from the right), who seems to play the role of Gayle King to Mayer's Oprah Winfrey. More »
search
Marissa Mayer's new Google logo bears striking similarity to Garth Brooks album cover
While Google's Marissa Mayer's instructions were for a new, tiny logo that would work well on cell phones, could there have been a subtle, even sub-conscious appeal to the many, many fans of Garth Brooks in America's heartland, where Mayer was born and raised? Her tastes run more to Dale Chihuly than Dale Earnhardt these days, but you can never quite take the country out of the girl. Because as commenter wikipin pointed out, the florid, lowercase "g" bears a striking similarity to a two-CD set of live concert recordings from the country music superstar. More »
design
The sudden appearance, in millions of browsers, of a new icon for Google was jarring to many users, though the change was slight — a capital "G" replaced by a lowercase "g". An E.E. Cummings-esque affectation? Perhaps, since the change was driven by overworked, underoccupied Google VP Marissa Mayer. She says she made her designers go through more 300 variations before settling on a lowercase blue "g". After putting her employees through the wringer, she's now outsourcing the mess to Google users But if you read Mayer's rules for an icon, though, you'll see she's set to reject anything but the one she chose. More »
Why Google wants to be small
The sudden appearance, in millions of browsers, of a new icon for Google was jarring to many users, though the change was slight — a capital "G" replaced by a lowercase "g". An E.E. Cummings-esque affectation? Perhaps, since the change was driven by overworked, underoccupied Google VP Marissa Mayer. She says she made her designers go through more 300 variations before settling on a lowercase blue "g". After putting her employees through the wringer, she's now outsourcing the mess to Google users But if you read Mayer's rules for an icon, though, you'll see she's set to reject anything but the one she chose. More »
sex and the city
Marissa Mayer decrees, "Let them eat cupcakes"
Pictured are a pair of Faux-nolo Blahniks made from cake and icing by I Dream of Cake's Shinmin Li, size "33" in honor of Google VP Marissa Mayer's birthday at her Four Seasons penthouse. Mayer also flew in cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery, the Manhattan cupcakery featured in Sex and the City, a product placement which is largely considered to have kicked off the sticky-sweet treat trend amongst the Scary Sadshaws set. According to one cupcake connoisseur familiar with Magnolia, Mayer could have gotten better desserts in San Francisco: "It's not worth flying them out from New York." But that's just the kind of fanciful display of devil-may-care wealth that Mayer is becoming increasingly well-known for. (Photo by Rachel Lea Fisher)
gallery
Photos from Marissa Mayer's "Sex and the City" screening
CENTURY SAN FRANCISCO CENTRE 9 — Where are the girls? An event producer and I both nervously paced through the lobby. Where was Marissa Mayer? The Google executive had rented a theater for the 8:50 screening of Sex and the City, but she and 300 of her closest friends were nowhere to be seen. Late, of course — have you tried to walk the block-long distance between Mayer's Four Seasons penthouse and the Westfield Centre in a pair of Manolo Blahniks? Finally, I spotted someone I knew — gorgeous Googler Brittany Bohnet, girlfriend of Facebooker Dave Morin, above. ("People are saying I look like Charlotte," said Bohnet, pictured above. "Do you think so?" Yes. Cuter than Charlotte, actually. More »
crash this bash
Marissa Mayer holding "Sex and the City" party tonight
At this very moment, a guest tells me, Google executive Marissa Mayer is throwing a "Blahnikfest" to celebrate her birthday and the premiere of Sex and the CIty. She's rented out a theater at San Francisco's downtown Century multiplex for her friends. Is Mayer our Carrie Bradshaw? Quite possibly, though Mayer's Four Seasons penthouse is more fabulous than the Sex and the City scribe. Like the heroine, she's found love in the hunky form of Zachary Bogue — her Mr. Big, though Mayer's the one with the far more impressive resume. She turns 33 today, as we've noted, and while she normally skips birthday parties during odd years — a "quirk," she says — Bogue was out of town today. The party features cakes the exact size and shape of Bradshaw's preferred shoes, made by Shinmin Li, the owner of the Mayer-backed I Dream of Cake bakery, as well as cupcakes flown in from New York's Magnolia Bakery. The invite: More »
birthday wishes
Happy birthday, Marissa Mayer!
According to a tipster, Marissa Mayer, (not) everyone's favorite Google VP for products, San Francisco society diva and baking wantrepreneur, turns 33 today. Valleywag never forgets its friends, so guess we got you a present, Ms. Mayer! Check it out, below. More »
your privacy is an illusion
Google Health may prove dangerous to your privacy
A group of Googlers, including ubiquitous trend-upsetter SVP Marissa Mayer, did their song and dance for the press at a "factory tour" on the Google campus in Mountain View today. The big news? The official launch of Google Health, which offers features like a doctor finder and the ability to upload and track your medical records. Already, the privacy concerns are mounting. More »
caption contest
Google raises the stakes in competition with rival Baidu
Google has been hoping to get more market share in China, but surely not this way. A tipster sends in this photo of bus ads in Xi'an, China, advertising "Googirls" with the search engine's familiar candy-colored design. Is this another Marissa Mayer project? Suggest a caption in the comments. The best one will become the new headline. Wednesday's winner: "The first rule of Hair club is you do not talk about Hair Club," by FlakJack.
don't be latino
Google doesn't care about Mexican people
Ask.com bungled the spelling of Cinco de Mayo, but at least they made an effort. Pictured here are Yahoo's animated mariachis and dancers. But Google, the company well known for its holiday flights of logo fancy? Nada. Yes, it's actually a minor holiday south of the border. But the victory in Puebla over the French has gone unnoticed in the Googleplex for the ninth year running. More »
nerdspotting
Marissa Mayer hits the town with hunky boytoy and Orkut
Google VP Marissa Mayer attended the San Francisco Ballet's New Work's Festival on Friday and she brought along all her favorite friends. These included Mayer's manfriend, real-estate fund manager Zach Bogue, who, for reasons unknowable hasn't starred in a season of ABC's the Bachelor yet. Mayer's outfit is "a softer, [more] feminine look than we usually see from her" reports SFLuxe — but check out Googler Orkut Buyukkokten's suit, below. It's a Roberto Cavalli, darlings. More »
discrimination
Lily-white couture aficionado Marissa Mayer is a champion of her gender at Google, struggling to ensure that 25 percent of its engineers are women. How is she doing on other measures of diversity? Google has come under fire from Congress for offering H-1B visas to foreign workers rather than increasing its numbers of African-American hires. Perhaps the problem lies in its executives' social circles. A collage of Mayer's Facebook friends in the Google network reveals very few faces that are not white or Asian.
How many black friends does Marissa Mayer have? Let's count!
Lily-white couture aficionado Marissa Mayer is a champion of her gender at Google, struggling to ensure that 25 percent of its engineers are women. How is she doing on other measures of diversity? Google has come under fire from Congress for offering H-1B visas to foreign workers rather than increasing its numbers of African-American hires. Perhaps the problem lies in its executives' social circles. A collage of Mayer's Facebook friends in the Google network reveals very few faces that are not white or Asian.
the sum of all human knowledge
