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That same Googler who was dating Barra is now in a relationship with
The Googler at the heart of all of this is Amanda Rosenberg, a five-year veteran at Google now working on Google Glass, according to a report from ValleyWag.
So who is she? She's a 26-year-old from England whose whole life appears to revolve around Google and Google Glass.
Google declined to comment on this story. We emailed Rosenberg, but got no response.
Her biggest claim to fame, prior to today, was that she came up with the phrase, "OK Glass" to activate Google Glass. She told the story of how she came up with the phrase on Google+.
She went to dinner with Glass product manager Mat Balez and his wife. She explains what happened next...
"In the car on the way back, Mat told me about how the team had been working on the 'hotword' for Glass. I must confess, I did not know what 'hotword' meant. Did I ask what it meant? No. Did I nod whilst looking pensive? You bet your glass I did. As I listened to Mat, I quickly* * * * deduced that he was referring to the phrase that sets off the Glass menu. He then asked me if I had any ideas for the hotword. In that moment the only phrase I could think of was ‘OK Glass’. I didn’t tell him straightaway though. Instead, I continued to look pensive and muttered something about ‘looking into it’ just to appear as though I was going to put more than 3 seconds of work into it.
When I got home, I tried my best to think of something else, anything else so that I could at least have a few options to send to Mat. Alas, I could not think of any others. I’ve been fortunately cursed with a one-track mind. So, I decided to put all my Glass eggs in one basket and send over a rationale for ‘OK Glass’ (below is the actual email I sent). A week later, it was implemented, at which point I asked Mat when I should start but apparently that’s ‘not really how it works’. I interviewed a week later and have been terrorising the Glass team ever since."
Rosenberg's LinkedIn profile says her title is "marketing manager" for Google Glass. Previously, she was an account manager, then managed mobile business development, then did marketing for Google+.
Rosenberg transferred to Google's offices in Mountain View from London in early 2012. She wrote a blog post on the experience:
"I'd been living a beautifully choreographed life in London for pretty much my entire life; family, friends, job, life. Done. Then one day I realized that yes, everyday was choreographed but, the beauty had faded and was now a bit...shit. So I applied for a transfer with my company to go work in a different country, in a different department, in a different role on a different product. Yes! The romance of a transfer! I’m going to be like one of those girls in the movies; I’ll glide into a new city and instantly meet some cool people in a ‘bar down town’. I’ll wear hats and start saying things like ‘My friend Cole was there last week, he said it was amazing apart from the food and atmosphere’ Oh, to be a person!"
This post is one of the rare personal stories she seems to have on the Internet, despite the fact that she uses just about every single social media service — Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+.
Rosenberg is most active on Google+ where she likes to post selfies, photos of billboards, and advertising she thinks is interesting, as well as sandcastles and other random funny stuff that gets passed around through Reddit and Buzzfeed.
Her Google+ postings are overwhelmingly dominated by Google Glass-related content, and photos of, and from, her friends at Google.
Here's a fairly funny video she posted of all the reactions she's seen for Google Glass. If you pay close attention, at the 1:09 mark, she mocks Sergey Brin slightly. She says, "I think I saw a picture of a homeless man on the subway wearing these." That's a reference to this photo of Brin.
Anyway, this video is a pretty good idea of who she is, or at least, who she portrays herself online.