Boy howdy was I surprised by how widely my post about leaving Google was picked up. People post about leaving their jobs every day, and my departure wasn’t even dramatic, so the whole amplification took me a bit by surprise.

My reactions:

• Techmeme: Hey, never been Techdotted before. It just happened to overlap with Amit Pagarwal’s time-lapse visualization of how Techmeme changes over 50 hours. I love that another big story in that time span was penned by Paul Buchheit, Gmail’s inventor.
• WebProNews: Saying I’m “Google’s Senior User Experience Design Lead” makes it sound like I’m the only one. “Senior UX Lead” is a ladder title; Fear not, I’m no linchpin to the organization.
• Google Blogoscoped: Thanks for the thoughtful write-up, and thanks even more for digging out and compositing a Warholesque montage of portraits from a six year old spoof video which, while prescient, I’d rather forget.
• TechCrunch: Your commenters are right, it must have been a pretty slow news day.
• VnuNet: You are brilliant and I love you. To wit:
  

  Referring to the move away from Google in his blog, Fox said, “Will it be awkward when I talk with friends [made at Google] about the web and they have to censor themselves to prevent discussing confidential products? Even more novel, how easily will I adapt to working in an environment where we’re far more open about the projects we’re working on, to the point of evangelizing them.”

  Fox did not reveal the name of the company he is joining.

  Ouch. Hypocrisy noted, and I’ll mend it in the morning.

• San Jose Mercury News (web and print!): You’re even more awesome than VnuNet. Thanks for not including anything like “(I’ve found someone else and I think we should see other people.)” You sold four more copies of your paper on Saturday.
• The two reporters who contacted Google PR, prompting them in turn to call me early Friday morning: Designing a web app isn’t the same as building a web app. The role of the user experience designer is just one of many, and I was privileged to be part of such an amazing team. I haven’t worked on Gmail, Calendar, or Reader in months, and my departure won’t have any impact on their continuing greatness. Their current designers are awesome and if they weren’t I wouldn’t have left.

Okay, now I’d better get to sleep. I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.