Life is a beta. Voltaire said that the perfect is the enemy of the good. Google lives the rule as it introduces every new product as a beta. That is Google's way to say that it trusts us to help it finish its products. It is Google's way to open up its design process to our wisdom.

If I had followed my own rules - if I had eaten my own dog food - I would have created a digital book that is searchable and linkable, that can be corrected and updated and discussed and passed around. But I took my publisher's advance money. Hey, dog's gotta eat. The book publishing industry still works - for now - because it adds value with editing, promotion, sales, and cash.

Get out of the way. This is actually Craig Newmark's law. As Google built the most powerful tool imaginable - the entire world of digital knowledge revealed behind a simple search box - so did Craig build a simple tool that changed society , and newspapers and real estate and more, without prescribing how we should use it. They create platforms to enable us to do what we want to do and then, instead of giving us rules about their use, then they stand back and put us in charge.

The first step in blogging is not writing them but reading them.

Just as our kids don't understand the difference between broadcast and cable, the line between TV and Internet TV is about to disappear.

I wish that Google would realize its own power in the cause of free speech. Google lives and profits by free speech and must use its considerable power to become a better guardian of it.

Just heard the best word in the English language: benign. (And I don't need to see that doctor again for five years.)