Google and Me

I’ve been using Google since late 2000. I made the switch from AltaVista because it was faster to load and had better results. Ever since then, I’ve been constantly amazed at the number of new services being released and acquisitions being made by Google.

When I stumbled across Google Blogoscoped in 2004, I immediately got hooked on the idea of trying to second-guess Google’s next move. Searching for secret services and subdomains, digging through source code, monitoring experimental sites for subtle changes, and looking out for security exploits are all things I’ve done and written articles about. It’s always fascinated me to see how quickly news about Google spreads across the Internet, newspapers, radio and television. And it shows that I’m not the only one interested in Google!

In October 2005, my name was mentioned in The New York Times, The Guardian and hundreds of other blogs and websites when I accidentally discovered the Google Base subdomain. Realising that people on the Internet like Google-related geeky stuff, I created the Google Brin Creator parody based on Google Page Creator in February 2006.

From time to time, I still searched for undiscovered Google services and was even linked to from the front page of Digg for a short time in July 2006 when I revealed more secret Google services.

Between September 2006 and December 2009, I was co-editor of Philipp Lenssen’s Google Blogoscoped where I wrote a number of articles and helped to look after the forum. I also featured in his books, 55 Ways to Have Fun With Google (self-published) and Google Apps Hacks (O’Reilly).

In 2008, I was technical reviewer for Google Apps: The Missing Manual (O’Reilly) and was interviewed by the BBC World Service for a special feature about Google’s 10th Birthday.

I joined the Webmaster Team at Google in January 2010, moved to YouTube in November 2013, and have been working on a new project at Google since August 2015.

You might also be interested in reading these Google-related blog posts.