As for defending Google — I’m not so sure I see it that way. Perhaps that’s how it appears from the outside — but to me it seems like part of the role is to both 1) provide insights into what Google is doing, why it’s doing it, and how it intends to accomplish its objectives; 2) work to make the organizational membrane somewhat more permeable. As it turns out, I find myself doing much more internal evangelism work than externally — because Google are a very focused lot! The result is that they don’t always know about all the work or existing initiatives going on outside the company. I’m sure many wished they could spend more time in the community, but at the end of the day, there’s lots and lots of code to write!

Anyway, it’s also been very interesting to see how people’s perspective change once you work for a largish company. I understand where their concerns come from, but as it turns out, providing feedback that is calm, collected, and productive has a much greater effect (I find) than any kind of negative fear-mongering (not naming names).

Couldn’t you compare your e-mail output? It feels like your role recently has been mostly to be a fireman against people thinking Google isn’t such a start-up after all — are we missing all the good internal creativity?

I was struck when you mentioned how many updates to Flickr you made in the interval.