The security guard was just doing his job: to prevent us from talking to Google employees. And he succeeded, blocking our camera and getting in our faces while

The security guard was just doing his job: to prevent us from talking to Google employees. And he succeeded, blocking our camera and getting in our faces while Googlers crossed the street safe from our prying lens, and their colleagues gathered at the windows looking at the commotion. “Do you always harass the press when people are out on the street like this,” I asked him, as he kept blocking the camera and jamming his phone cam into our faces. “No I don’t always harass the press. I only do it when the press harass us,” he replied. Make no mistake -- the various government agencies which, in the late 1990s, helped fund the fledgling research projects that eventually became Google knew they were onto something. And this is exactly the kind of "return on investment" they were ultimately hoping for. Today Venice Beach, tomorrow, the world!