Yes - as far as I know that is correct (and you should verify this with your lawyer). As I said in the footnotes: "NDA's have their time and place of course" But even in your case, *after* you file your patent application, you are likely going to be paranoid about anyone knowing about your idea. Its during that time that folks tend to still obsess with NDA's while they should really be thinking FrieNDA's...

Hey Fredbascunana - thanks for stopping by to comment. I can't argue with your point, nor Ouriel's. I've never run a company the size of Google's, and certainly don't pretend to suggest anything to them on how they should... they're some of the smartest people on the planet, and have done a phenomenal job building this company. Android is a great example - but, it is also an example of a product that a startup could likely never do. What I suggested in my post is that an entrepreneur running a *startup*, has no luxury to do more than one thing very well. Unless you're raised more than say $30M, that is absolutely, scientifically the case. Google can afford to do some Waves and Buzz's and Knols, and kill them easily if they don't work out. A startup will simply die quickly by following the same strategy.

OK... Besides - if you look at the title of my post - I wasn't trying to criticize Wave as a Google product, but rather see what we the entrepreneurs can learn from it. I have no idea what's the right way for a BigCo like Google to go about building and launching a product. They definitely have the luxury of doing many things, and not necessarily focus on doing one thing well. Due to their size and resources, it might be smart for them to do products that are too big and complex for startups to focus on. I don't claim to know. BUT - startups don't have that luxury. We barely have the luxury of doing one thing well... and this is a big lesson entrepreneurs can take away from Wave when building their products.

Thanks for the comment Ouriel, but I have to disagree... Go back and watch the launch video. They were showing how Wave would: - replace email - replace IM - be a team collaboration tool - replace commenting on blogs - replace CMS's/blog authoring tools - etc Except for a few categories - medical, financial and defense - every product has to start by doing a single thing better than anything else in the world. Wave was the absolute opposite of that since the beginning...

Thanks! Didn't want to announce - but trying to... ;-)

Hehe - just dug up this old tweet from the Wave launch... http://twitter.com/YaronGalai/status/4736790343/ I guess most people that hyped up the product at launch ended up also 'not being able to care less' about the product...

Thanks Pete - wish I had read your post back in 2007. You were spot on, and I totally missed this paradox - search matters not on those queries that "matter", but rather on all those queries that don't... ;-)

Hey Jay - thanks for the great comment. Agreed - it's going to take more than improving results for the long tail queries to change our Google habit... Also - I wrote in the past that catching up on paid search is nearly impossible as well (http://www.webx0.com/2007/05/microsoft_final.html). Microsoft is dog chasing Google on 2 fronts that are nearly impossible to win. Ugh...

One comment to myself - I fell for the exact trap I described above when I posted about Mahalo a while back - http://www.webx0.com/2007/07/mahalo.html I loved the concept behind Mahalo - taking the 20% search queries that "matter" and using human editors - making them great. But I now realize my mistake in thinking this could take significant market share from Google... it hardly mattered for people that some results were great. It's the 80% of not-so-great search results that matter most when trying to form new search habits.

Could be Daniel... Time will tell. My bet is that most people will use Flipboard much less than they think they will...

Thanks for the tip [heartbeat]! Good points...

Merci!

Thanks for the mention and the client submissions Oren! Absolutely sending you a copy of the book - just email me your address. Would love it if you can report on your Outloud experience here or on your FB feed. Thanks!

Thanks Dror! We're absolutely excited as well. Thanks for being one of the early Outloud supporters.

Hey Heidi - great post! Per your question, we also offer a related link service at Outbrain for TypePad blogs - http://www.outbrain.com/get/ratings/TypePad Ping me if you have any questions, or if you want to try it with thumbnails on - galai[at]outbrain[dot]com

Now that makes a little more sense!!

;-) It surprises me that you have so quickly forgotten the presentations you received from me...