It’s another media feeding frenzy today.
As I left work to go to lunch around noon today, I noticed the van of a news team parked on the verge of Amphitheatre Parkway. They were setting up cameras and erecting a satellite dish on top of the van’s roof, but I couldn’t tell which radio or television station they represented.
Anyway, one of the news men overheard me telling a colleague how to walk to our lunch destination. He tapped me on the shoulder and asked me, “Do millionaires still walk?”
Not being a lawyer or a sportsman or a spokesman or some other public functionary, I’m not used to being approached by the media. Given that I administer Linux computers and Internet services, I consider this incident yet another amusing anecdote with which to regale my future children a few years from now.
Whether or not any money is generated by this whole escapade is, in some ways, secondary to the whole experience of having been party to the rise and continued rise of Google. The last few years have represented a unique period in the history of Silicon Valley. I consider myself very fortunate to have been a part of it all, regardless of how things pan out. I don’t expect there to be another phenomenon to match the Internet boom in my lifetime.
My reply to the reporter, by the way, was, “I can’t even be seen to smile at you, or they’ll cut off my head.”
It was surreal. I thought it was more of a friendly punch to the shoulder than a tap though.