Google’s Marissa Mayer turns LeWeb interview into an Android commercial

What do you get when you combine Michael Arrington with Marissa Mayer? You get a show.

Not just great entertainment but also neatly scripted and measured answers and a slightly predictable program. It is pretty hard to get Marissa Mayer to say anything she hasn’t decided to say in advance. Even Arrington, who seems to enjoy asking Marissa questions that she didn’t expect or might even find slightly offensive isn’t able to but a ding in her defensive shield.

Opening with questions about the failed acquisitions of Yelp and Groupon, we got exactly what we’d expect — very little. However, given the right opportunity, Mayer turned the entire interview into a commercial for Android and the new Nexus S.

We got an interesting look at the new Maps function in all of its beauty on the Gingerbread OS and we also got to find out that Mayer actually uses the device herself. Mayer did admit, though, that she also uses an iPhone and she admitted that it works beautifully in Japan. Sadly, users in the US and Europe haven’t had the same results.

So no, the interview wasn’t as hard-hitting or insightful as we’d have hoped, but it was every bit as entertaining as we thought it would be. As Mayer talked about what she would do if she were Yahoo CEO, addressed the challenges of acquisitions and talked about yesterday’s Chrome event it offered somewhat of a look inside her mind and the mind of Google

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Interestingly, Mayer even agreed with what we found yesterday, in that the majority of the “applications” on the Chrome Web Store are simply hosted applications with easily-accessed links.  What we didn’t know (and still can’t prove to be true) is that the “apps” are coded differently to run specifically on Chrome.

Overall, it was still a great interview, with some insight about Mayer’s business sense. As some have questioned Google’s motives for placing Mayer in the spotlight so often, it was once again made clear today that she has quite the mindset for business and a feel for what Google is doing on the whole.