Was Google's Marissa Mayer Snubbed in Local + More Reorg Notes

Google CEO Larry Page made waves in his first week back at the helm last week, promoting seven executives to senior vice president to head their individual business units and making a couple noteworthy changes to Google’s business operations.

Previously we reported the promotions of Andy Rubin (mobile); Vic Gundotra (social); Sundar Pichai (Chrome); Salar Kamangar (YouTube and video); Alan Eustace (search); and Susan Wojcicki (ads), but a seventh promotion emerged Friday. After blogging about the Google-ITA deal, we learned Jeff Huber is now Google’s Senior Vice President, Commerce and Local. Previously Huber was Senior VP of Engineering.

Many people quickly noticed that Marissa Mayer, vice president of location and local services since October, was bypassed and wondered why. There’s still no clear answer.

But perhaps it’s no coincidence that the oddly named Hotpot (a name Google was still trying to explain in their final blog post), which debuted in November, was merged into Google Places Friday as well — perhaps as part of Google’s bigger focus on social with Google +1, as seen by Page basing the bonuses of Google employees in part on the company’s social success.

Elsewhere at Google HQ, Shona Brown, who ran Google’s business operations and previously ran “People Operations” (Google’s name for human resources), seems to be on the outs based on an All Things Digital report.

Brown is credited with designing Google’s internal management structure — a structure Page is in the midst of changing. So Brown will now take over Google.org — Google’s philanthropic arm — from new business development VP Megan Smith.

With Brown out at business operations, Senior VP and CFO Patrick Pichette will take over that area, as well as human resources, which was formerly run by VP Laszlo Bock.

Quite a busy first week under Page. Will we see more of the same this week, before Google reports its Q1 earnings this Thursday?