Noam Shazeer

"He did not get a lot of headcount. He started the thing as a 20% project,Then he just recruited an army of 20% helpers who were ignoring their day jobs and just helping him with this system."

"He built something really cool that actually worked, while other people were building systems that were just failing."

"I think it was just a matter of large companies having concerns about launching projects that can say anything, how much you're risking versus how much you have to gain from it."