And in walks Larry...

How many billionaires does it take to brighten up a press conference?

Just one: Google co-founder Larry Page.

Yesterday afternoon at Google's Zeitgeist conference me and about a dozen other journalists were in the middle of a rather dull product demonstration. You know the sort of thing: these are our new search tools, aren’t they wonderful etc etc.

Just as we were all about to nod off, in walks Google co-founder Larry Page, along with chief executive Eric Schmidt - completely unannounced.

Mario Queiroz, Google’s VP of international product management, nearly had a heart attack in the middle of his presentation, the Google PR team all turned white instantly, and every one of the dozing journos instantly came to life.

What followed was a pretty frank and open Q&A with two of the most influential people in digital.

The duo got quite a grilling about Google Street View, consumer privacy and Wolfram Alpha. On the whole they answered most of the questions levelled at them candidly. Only a few times did the phrase ‘let’s talk offline later’ come up, which is Google-speak for ‘I’m not answering that’.

Top marks all round.

Below are a few highlights from the Q&A

Page on Wolfram Alpha: "All those kinds of things are good. There are a lot of things that still need to be done in search."

Page on privacy: "We’re not trying to get any information forcibly indexed. If you don’t want to be indexed you don’t have to be."

Schmidt on plans to monetise new Google services through advertising: "If the user experience is not there the advertising won’t be effective. We take a holistic approach to search."

Schmidt on Google’s planned video chat service: "The quality is better than Skype."