One night, we were all sitting around at three in the morning on exercise balls. Everyone had finished coding for the day, and we were talking about what Google could do. A bunch of us had read that day about the Library of Congress possibly wanting to digitize. Should we pursue that? How would that help Web search? Would that be a good thing for the world? How would you do it? We brainstormed about projects that we wouldn’t get a chance to explore for years, such as Google Book Search. There was an immense sense of hope and innovation.

I remember George Harik, who’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, jumped into the middle of the circle and said, ‘Stop! I want everybody to savor this moment, because no matter what happens from here on out, it’ll never be as good as it is right now.’

George, who is almost never wrong, couldn’t have been more wrong. If you listen to that conversation and you listen to the conversations that inevitably will happen tonight around the pool table or the foosball table here, they sound the same.”