[Last Updated -- October 2026]

I started louisgray.com back in 2006 because I needed an outlet to talk about the things I was interested in, even if nobody was listening. (See: A brief history of the site from 2008). At the time, the blog format was emerging to be the best way for us to post quickly online. We broadly engaged through links to items on the web we found interesting and responded in comments. With the growth of Web 2.0, I had a front row seat to how we all rapidly adopted social media to share more, faster. I advocated aggressively for personalization of all these new streams, defended against information overload, and eagerly highlighted new products that came to market with new ideas.

Some of those new products went on to become leaders in their space, while others got acquired. Many more disappeared. Many of my favorite places to engage, including Google Reader and FriendFeed, are now only remembered in my archives and Wikipedia. But my belief in Silicon Valley and curiosity has not gone away.

With about 3,000 posts in the archives, after regularly visiting their Mountain View campus as a partner with my6sense, or just as a blogger, I joined Google in 2011 to work on Google+. While the product didn't become a long-term winner, my bets on Android and ChromeOS in 2010 appeared prescient, as Android has become the most widely used operating system in the world, while personal computing has evolved to be cloud computing. I knew taking a role at Google would change the way I would be perceived, as I would be introduced as a Googler, rather than a tech blogger, and that assisted in much of the bit rot and time gap that brought this blog to a standstill.

I remain a permanent advocate of the open web, standards, and leveraging technology for good. The world of 2026 is vastly different than it was in 2006, but it's important to keep our records of the past and show the through lines that got us here.