Avinash and I had planned to have lunch for a few months and I’m glad that I had a chance to come to the GooglePlex for something other than a party, so I could see what life is like at Google during a “normal” workday.

I also made a video of the my visit – mostly going to and coming back from Google; I don’t have Avinash on film, and Google didn’t want me to film inside the buildings (but the lobby was OK – which I did film).

Avinash was a very gracious host, we had lunch and talked about Web Analytics, blogs, getting the Google penalty off Webmetricsguru.com that was invoked by Know More Media – he felt that would be taken care of, and told me Google is not against advertising, but they are against certain types of sponsored listings.

We talked about what life is like for Avinash at Google – he still travels to speak at conferences, on occassion and Google will, from time to time, send him to meet with it’s bigest advertisers.  Avinash’s job, internally, is work with several times within Google to come up with ways to improve the interface(s) of all of them.

We talked a little about the state of the Web Analytics industry and the choices of what conferences he speaks at – he’s looking for new audiences to speak to – and chooses where he’ll speak carefully according to his branding.   He’s got close to 12,000 RSS Subscribers and growing, since he speaks to new audiences as he can.

After lunch, Avinash took me around the GooglePlex and to the Google Store Beta, where I bought some shirts and stuff – which he ended up paying for (to get the discount) and then giving it to me as a gift – I didn’t expect that.  Thanks Avinash!  That was very kind.