Time for the next stage

After giving it a lot of thought and consideration, tomorrow is going to be my last day at Google. I've been working on FeedBurner since 2003 and I feel that the product is heading in a great direction with a fantastic, talented team that will take it to the next level, so it just feels like the right time to hand over the keys. I'm going to be taking some time off, then I'll probably try to think of something new to start up in the fall or winter.

I have worked with many amazing people and learned a ton over the last two years at Google. I certainly can't imagine working for another big company -- I think I'm pretty much spoiled there. A few amazing things about the company that I value and will bring to any future endeavors are Google's climate of trust and transparency, how the internal communication and the external communication are perfectly aligned, and how projects anticipate and design for success and scale. And the food ... I won't forget about the food.

FeedBurner was acquired by Google in June 2007, and we spent the better part of the last two years porting the application to the Google technology stack. At times it was a painful process, but we did it, and the product is better for it. I know it seems like we've been stagnant, but FeedBurner is now positioned to start adding cool features again -- to not only improve the feed analytics and monetization options for publishers, but also to help publishers accelerate the distribution of their content, and to become a key component of the real-time web. The team really has some exciting things planned, so please stay tuned.

As for me, I'm going to spend some time to decompress, flush cache, and continue to use this blog to "research out loud". I'm excited to see where it all leads.