When you interview at Google, they don't tell you what the job is. You get hired for a pool and the reason they do it that way is they don't want outsiders learning their secrets in the interview process.

So in a strong sense with Java it was a learning process for us - there was some tech learning - but the most important learnings were social or behavioral things.

For us, the real goal is to make it so that the software ecosystem is as healthy as possible.

The whole thought of a career with computers - given that hardly anybody even knew what they were - it wasn't even a concept.

I've always been interested in technology, but specifically how we can use machines to engage the imagination. I started using computers when I was young and was fascinated by creating rules and instructions that allow a computer to engage in a dialogue with humans. The stories found in the data all around us can do just that.

Consulting offered me an opportunity to see a lot of different businesses in different regions of the world, to see how textiles were being affected by foreign competition, how technology was changing.

Uncollected sales taxes on Internet purchases cost the states more than $16 billion in 2001.

One of the things I like about the computer that I use is that I can write a program on it or I can download a program on to it and run it. That's kind of important to me, and that's also kind of important to the whole future of the internet... obviously a closed platform is a serious brake on innovation.