You Talk to It. It Usually Does What You Ask. Oh, and It Burps. [NY Times]

Web 2.0 is a marketing term, and it's not a term that I use.

Schmidt, Financial Times, August 28:

Ebay and Google both benefit from the adoption of Web 2.0, or Web 3.0.

Google's Chief Looks Ahead [TIME]
Earlier: Valleyspeak: Eric Schmidt's new TIME interview translated [Valleywag]

three plucky AOLers prove him right.

At Hewlett-Packard, a Chief Wounded by Divided Attention [NY Times]
Earlier: Mark Hurd too busy running company to run company [Valleywag]

At least twice when he had the opportunity — at meetings in July 2005 and in March 2006 — Mr. Hurd failed to ask critical questions about the methods in the leak investigation.

But some people close to him suggest — though they do not know for certain — that he failed to focus on the leak investigation partly because he was focused on getting the company fixed and partly because he regarded the search as the project of Patricia C. Dunn, the chairwoman.

At Hewlett-Packard, a Chief Wounded by Divided Attention [NY Times]

There's this one user, a Google zealot - we don't know who he is - who occasionally sends an e-mail to our "comments" address. Every time he writes, the e-mail contains only a two-digit number. It took us awhile to figure out what he was doing. Turns out he's counting the number of words on the home page. When the number goes up, like up to 52, it gets him irritated, and he e-mails us the new word count.

2416.

Google.be [Google Belgium]
Google Mugshot: Did you visit Google Belgium Today? [Digital Inspiration]

Mayer is proud of Google and unable to name any mistake.

The Seattle P-I, quoting Mayer, January 26:

"We made a big mistake."

She is, of course, referring to the balloon hat she wore at her 30th birthday party.

Google's geeky queen of the search-o-sphere [Guardian]
Google admits online stumble [Seattle P-I]

In which he says that many service-oriented businesses like his should fund themselves...

Then why did his company, 37signals, pick this moment to take funding from Amazon's founder?

Seriously. Jason says in the magazine: "I don't have anything against big business. It's just not for me."

On his blog, days later: "We hope this boost of ambition, and Jeff's personal vote of confidence, will help us achieve our big plans."

[Update: link removed; it was obtained by inadvertantly using private information] My Business Magazine: The Next Small Thing [PDF]
Bezos Expeditions invests in 37signals [37signals]

Speaking at Startup School, publisher Tim O'Reilly invoked Mark Twain's 'Do the right thing. You will gratify some people and astonish the rest' quote to introduce the story of his 2001 protest against Amazon's 1-Click patent. No word on which quote he uses to introduce the story of his 2003 decision to not share 1-Click prior art that could quash the patent. As Twain once said, 'Facts are stubborn things.'

My Talk at Startup School [O'Reilly Radar]