I left Google after four years of working on Google Maps, search, and Google TV as a product marketing manager. I knew I wanted to do something on my own.
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.
I have turned off Google Alerts and don't Google my name or my pen names. I don't go on message boards. I don't read my book reviews.
I'll admit it: I'm one of those people who has a Google News alert set for my own name.
Google's competitors argue that Google designs its search display to promote Google 'products' like Google Maps, Google Places, and Google Shopping, ahead of competitors like MapQuest, Yelp, and product-search sites.
I search my name on Tumblr more than I Google myself, and I Google myself every day.
Personal branding is about managing your name - even if you don't own a business - in a world of misinformation, disinformation, and semi-permanent Google records. Going on a date? Chances are that your "blind" date has Googled your name. Going to a job interview? Ditto.
Google gives preference to its own products, so having a Google+ account influences your search rankings.
We wanted people to remember the name as soon as they heard it. When people become so accustomed to the Wii name, nobody is going to say it's a strange name, just like nobody is going to say that Google is a strange name or IKEA is a strange name today.
Here's my rule: You always want to pay cash for your own books, because if they look at the name on the credit card and then they look at the name on the book jacket, then there's this look of such profound sympathy for you that you had to resort to this. It really is withering.
I wish that Google would realize its own power in the cause of free speech. The debate has been often held about Google's role in acceding to the Chinese government's demands to censor search results. Google says that it is better to have a hampered internet than no internet at all. I believe that if the Chinese people were threatened with no Google, they might even rise up and demand free speech - free search and links - from their regime. Google lives and profits by free speech and must use its considerable power to become a better guardian of it.
I think we've seen a lot of examples of giving a name its own definition in the dot-com world. Amazon, Google, Yahoo - these are names we never would have dreamed major corporations would choose.
Any child can tell you what Google does - Google gives you the answers. But Google doesn't, not really.
Sit down at your computer or open your nearest mobile device and Google these words: 'Directed by.' What's the first predictive text that comes up? Martin Scorsese? Quentin Tarantino? Ingmar Bergman? Chances are the first name Google suggested was Robert B. Weide. That's me. Sort of.
The trouble with stand-up is it sort of is you and yet it isn't you and it's incredibly hard not to take everything said about you personally. I would never Google my own name; I don't want to hear people being mean about me.
Over the years, there have been challenges about who can use our name. It's quite simple: A majority of people left in the band at a certain time own the name. It's not like I'm the guy who has the name under my own contract.