Oh, it's most of the "big questions" that you've either already read in the dozens of articles and commentaries and interviews, or haven't read because you don't give a damn.

Sergey slithers around a question about the fight with Microsoft over default search, without actually admitting: Google's mad at Microsoft for doing the same thing with MSN search that Google does with Mozilla Firefox.

Larry's proud that everyone's glad to get traffic from Google. And if you're trying to hide, you will be assimilated re-educated gently coaxed out.

Sergey gives a tepid answer to a mention of "Don't be evil." (The questioner mangles it as "Do no evil," natch.) In any case, Sergey admits that not everyone will always agree with Google's decisions. In other words, you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time...

How does Google begin to collect demographic data, asks a reporter from the San Jose Mercury News. Larry says specific marketing works much better than demo data (which taps into the basic "situational behavior" theory of psychology).

A reporter from a Japanese paper asks about privacy issues and ends with, "How do you prove you're not evil?" Eric: "Yes, Larry, how do you prove you're not evil?" Larry: "I'll...answer the second part..."

And what about the risk of getting bought by another company in the future? Larry and Sergey are a bit bewildered at the thought. Who can blame them? Man, if they sold to someone really big, they could be, like, billionaires!

Google Press Day: Live Stream [Google]
More Press Day coverage: Google Press Squeeze [Google]

What Mayer said at the live-streaming Google Press Day:

• Mayer: "You subscribe to people and organizations you think are interesting, who you want to collaborate with on search results."
• On top of search results, you might find a subscribe link. This works kind of like personalized results — if you subscribed to a site called Gapminder, relevant searches will put the Gapminder results at the top.
• Digg news is a Google partner! Good job, Kevin Rose! You are so worth more than Yahoo's $40 million offer.
• Five or six other partners — Fandango was one, missed the others.
• Marissa kids about Google Health, which she "accidentally" clearly leaked in an interview. So yeah, that's launched. Big surprise. But it does show a new, user-built form of vertical-building. Yep, even Google recognizes the occasional usefulness of humans.

Hoo boy. Senior VP Jonathan Rosenberg (pictured) starts by asking journalists to thank him for getting press day over before 5 PM EDT. Seriously, he tells them, "Someone's supposed to say 'Thank you.' You're welcome."

11:46: He talks about Google Earth. "How many of you have looked at your house? Come on, all of you have looked at your house."

11:47: VP Marissa Mayer takes over, thank God. (Oh — no, not "takes over" as in "reveals herself as a Cylon and laughs as bombs vaporize the press. "Takes over" as in "takes the podium.") I'll mock liveblog the rest after the jump.

11:51: Oh no! She hands it back to Jonathan!

11:53: Click-to-call: "That's gonna be a fundamental change in what the value of the advertisement is." Yeah, now the advertiser gets free prank calls.

11:55: Jonathan lists companies Google bought — Picasa, Keyhole, Blogger. Ouch, no mention of Measuremap, SketchUp, Writely, or that radio ad network?

11:56: Okay, Marissa's kind of charming. She's pacing a lot, though. And I think her spine's glowing.

11:58: She drops a shoe — Google Desktop's time between releases keeps halving, which means they're due for a release now. "Look for that in the release announcement section." So with this and the Google Health rumors, Marissa is Google's official product leaker.

12:02: Jonathan pushes Google Pack. (Ugh, they didn't drop that idea?) If anything's wrong with your computer, something in Google Pack will fix it. Nice rebranding, Jonathan — until one of the Google Pack components has a lousy release.

12:03: I really don't like this guy. Jonathan Rosenberg is kind of obnoxious.

12:04: "The power of maps and satellites" is now available on "your mobile device." If your mobile device is a Blackberry, which, admittedly, it probably is.

12:07: Oh cool, Google opens its zeitgeist to the press. "I hope your wireless is working," says Jon. "Oh — it's not. Um." Everyone at home enjoys some schadenfreude.

12:09: Marissa shows Google Gadgets — Google's gunning for its own Dashboard/Yahoo Widgets set. Google Desktop has a media player — drag and drop songs on it — and other rich applications integrated with Google products like Orkut.

Oh man, that's brilliant. Why build an OS when you can build a parasite?

12:15: Marissa announces Google Co-op: here's a full post about it.

12:27: Tom Foremski from news blog Silicon Valley Watcher asks his second question of the day. Something about Adsense and Adwords...as with his first question, he's muddled. Sit down, Tom.

12:32: Marissa and Jonathan explain that results clustering and drill-down usually doesn't help — not if you can nail the answer the first time. But sure, Google Co-op is the sort of clustering that may actually work.

12:33: "Pictures aren't searchable." Gee, Google, that's why you almost bought Riya before deciding you could program facial recognition on your own. That Riya-killer not coming along as well as you thought?

9:35: Just turned on the stream. Pizzicato Five's "Baby Love Child" plays over the spinning Google Zeitgeist Globe. Audio quality is rough.

9:38: "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen...please turn off all cell phones. Our presentation will start in a couple of minutes." Screen still on the zeitgeist. New, lamer techno song starts. I don't recognize it.

9:45: Still just the globe and the "random Google searches" feed. Someone searched for "pope and jews."

9:47: Eliott Schrage, VP of global communications, steps to the podium. All right, let's liveblog this after the jump.

9:47: Google doesn't take journalists' time for granted, says Eliott. Now he starts some bullet-point list:
1. Journalists can ask leadership team questions
2. Greater transparency about Google. "Now of course, there are limits..." One theme, though, is localization around the world.
3. "We can help you all do a better job." (And then ban you for a year for learning too well.)

9:52: The wifi is down, says Eliott. Now they're showing a string of highlights from the last year. Froogle. Google Earth. Those Chinese lip-synching guys who were popular on, um, YouTube. "22 offices worldwide." Loud club music. Kai-Fu Lee headshot. Vint Cerf headshot.

9:56: CEO Eric Schmidt talking. Yadda, yadda, yadda. He's reading from notes on a paper. Still, he's learned a bit since those old public speaking classes.

9:57: Mashups, use of Google APIs are going to keep spreading. Whoa — "and add some real insight that *mumble* only humans can do *mumble*." Really, Eric seemed either reluctant or awkward mentioning those damn hu-mans.

10:00: Eric's punchlines fall a little flat. He's giving some tidy explanations of Google's vision, but nothing new and shiny. He tells a story: "How long will I live?" he asked Google. "I was told, 64. I found another answer, 82, I liked that more." Is it an intro into the much-anticipated Google Health search? Nope, he moves on to more strategy talk.

10:09: "There's room for all the companies that I named [Yahoo and Microsoft] and many more to be successful..."

10:10: Challenges for Google: Governments. Hmm. "The challenge to a corporation is to act responsibly when standards are not clear."

10:11: "The goal here is...to find the right path, through conflicting goals, which is consistent with the company." He alludes to the Google Print fight.

10:12: "I would propose the First Rule of the Internet — modestly: 'People have a lot to say.'"

10:15: Small screens on mobile mean Google has to work in different ways. (In other words, advertising's fucked.)

10:17: Google's 5-year plan: "The product that I've always wanted to build, we call Serendipity — tell me what I should be typing. Infinite world browsing. Cameras connected to phones, to computers, and everything working. Translation has got to be good." OCR phone. Constant connection to online communities. "Everyone believes the wireless data problem has been solved."

10:18: Strategy: "We're much more focused in user participation. Much more focused in partner participation." Video, blogging — Eric makes the international sign for digital convergence (or the "Schhhup" sign from Apple's iLife commercial — the one with that guy from "Ed"): two hands interlocking.

10:20: Eric finally puts down his notes to make better metaphorical hand gestures. Still reading them from the podium. Now he's just re-stating the mission statement.

10:21: "If there's anything I can end you with — leave you with..." Whoa, Eric, let's be a bit more careful with the Freudian slips! Revealing The Plan is for next year.

Now some technical guy's coming up. Go watch the stream yourself. But I think they're launching Google Health — this guy just brought up a search about heart health.

Google Press Day live stream [Google]

So as of 9:10, Google has the local press on its turf and no one can see what's going on. It's quiet...too quiet.

JOURNALISTS! GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN!

Hello,

We're looking forward to seeing you tomorrow at Google's Annual Press Day!

From Google to Valleywag (and the rest), 5:37 PM:

Dear all,

You received the "Google Press Day: May 10" email in error. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Well, fuck you too.

The fake-out Google Press Day mass e-mail, sent to over 60 hacks with all recipient addresses exposed: