Paul Graham PyCon 2012 keynote

Paul Graham PyCon 2012 keynote
pyvideo.org

PG seems down on Google from the initial statement that it may have peaked, to making fun of its search results as similar to the scientologist principle of "what's true is what's true for you" or something that makes you feel like you are being A-B tested, to Gmail being painfully slow. PG said he would pay $50/month for a good email replacement, and after just having talked about his friend at Google complaining of too much email and saying Gmail was slow, I think he was implying that Gmail needs to be replaced.

So, what interests me most about this is his mention of his friend at Google.

Read: http://www.gototheboard.com/articles/How_to_find_startup_ide...

Matt Cutts (search engine God of Google) said "I’ll stop with a story. I have a friend at Google who is really good at noticing things that annoy him. While walking from his car to his desk in the morning, he can easily find six things that irritate him because they should be improved."

Matt says this is "his" friend, but is Matt Cutts PG's Google friend? This sounds very similar, and there is a hint of their relationship at the end of this article when PG got him to personally handle an issue with HN not being listed first in search results: http://getoffmyinternets.net/2011/11/25/paul-graham-knows-ho...

However, a better guess is probably that it is Peter Norvig, Director of Research. There are examples of their relationship around, like Peter reading a draft of his: http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=355984

It's interesting that PG is pushing for someone to compete with Google though. It is almost like these comments were meant to be a public criticism of Google by his friend via PG rather than just to provide startup ideas.

http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22I+don%27...