[scribu]

I agree that it's one of his most useful essays ever.

I didn't find it particularly long, though. It would be great if more top links on HN were as in-depth as this.

[lmm]

It felt like the main difference from most essays is that this one give lots of concrete examples of everything he talks about.

I'm in two minds about this. It makes it more accessible, but seems like it could divert attention away from the general point to the specific companies.

[dmoney]

It's long, but at least PG gets to the point. So many articles have a title like "Why x is y", and then start like "The cool evening air smelled of honeysuckle in <place that, initially, would seem to have nothing to do with x or y>", and are multiple pages long even though having a web page be more than one page long makes no sense.