Still, I know I’m speaking for a lot of us out here who would really enjoy hearing insider stuff.

In fact I was just chatting about this with ummm, Mark Jen down there at a Mashup Camp event and, ummm, he seemed pretty happy …. : )

With regards to blogging about Google on my own blog… well, it’s been a tough decision for me. As you might imagine, my time at Google has been fascinating, challenging, sometimes frustrating, most often rewarding. I could tell so many stories!

But here’s why, at least as of yet, I do not do so:

- I want to respect the privacy and also feelings of my colleagues.

- If I post on search / Webmaster stuff, my blog will radically be transformed from a place that my friends and family and genial acquaintances on the Web visit to a place that gets inundated with questions, complaints, and so on by a zillion Webmasters and Google users. For both better and worse, Google as a company, a brand, a set of products and services brings out STRONG opinions! I spend many, many hours a day on my computer. The last thing I want to do is feel obligated to tackle work stuff in my limited free time. I want to go to the gym, meet up with friends, go dancing, hiking, etc.

- I’ve even shied away from posting strong or controversial opinions on my blog lately because I’m well aware that such comments get spirited around the blogosphere as “GOOGLER Adam Lasnik says…” or, worse yet, “Google feels that…”

I love Google, I love working at Google, and at the same time, I am determined to also have an identity apart from Google. My blog, at least thus far, is part of that identity apart .

With that said, I also agree that it’s a shame in a way. Before I got to Google, I *WANTED* to know what Google was like… the culture, the workload, everything. And now I feel almost a responsibility to share what I know with others. But the interests in privacy and my free time and such have so far outweighed my “sharing” conscience.