Hal Varian
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"Hal Ronald Varian" is an economist specializing in microeconomics and information economics. He is the chief economist at Google and he holds the title of emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley where he was founding dean of the UC Berkeley School of Information/School of Information. He has written two bestselling textbooks: Intermediate Microeconomics, an undergraduate microeconomics text, and Microeconomic Analysis, an advanced text. Together with Carl Shapiro, he co-authored Information Rules/Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy and The Economics of Information Technology: An Introduction.

He joined Google in 2002 as a consultant, and has worked on the design of advertising auctions, econometrics, finance, corporate strategy and public policy.

He received his B.S. from MIT in economics in 1969 and both his Master of Arts (postgraduate)/M.A. (mathematics) and Ph.D. (economics) from the University of California, Berkeley in 1973. He has taught at MIT, Stanford University, the University of Oxford, the University of Michigan, the University of Siena and other universities around the world. He has two honorary doctorates, from the University of Oulu, Finland in 2002, and a Dr. h. c. from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany, awarded in 2006.

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It's a fun thing. Now one of the things we're thinking about is what to do with it.

With research, the informed buyer is going to be able to say, 'The item is worth about this.

A project manager isn't just interfacing with members of the project. He's also interfacing with the rest of the organization.

Until now there's been this one-quality-fits-all access, and now companies are experimenting with [tiered] services. There's been a lot of engineering work, but nobody's looked at the economic side.

Imagine that the blackboard is an N-dimensional manifold.

It's possible it could be a victim of its own success. As more people chime in, you get a cacophony.

The first dose is free. Once you start using a product, you keep using it.