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.

People are enduring more than a temporary financial crisis. We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the economy. Companies and industries will in great measure no longer grow by borrowing vast capital to make huge acquisitions. The way to grow to critical mass - the Google way - will be to become platforms and networks that enable others to build businesses, grow, and succeed.

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.

What’s insidious about the fear of what others will say is that you rarely hear them say it. You imagine what they’d say. You imagine they care that much about you. The fragility of our own egos gets the better of us

Do what you do best, and link to the rest

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'd love if Google ran my cable or phone company. Instead of making their businesses out of telling us what we can't do, GT&T would recognize the benefit of helping us do what we want to do: use the internet more and create more of our own stuff. Google might even figure out how to make connectivity ad-supported and free. Sadly, though, I think Google knows what it is and won't expand into other industries, even if it would be good at running a cable or energy or phone company.