because today is the last day of a 5 year run for mr eric case at Google/Blogger.

the busblog has been around for seven years this august. the entire time ive used Blogger. one reason is because i have had unbelievable support and encouragement from the people behind Blogger, from ev, to the jasons, to biz, to kimmy, and eric and many others.

my love of Blogger is basically unconditional, i have received pretty much everything because of blogger and this blog, but to be respected and taken care of by so many hard working and generous souls at Blogger only added to the already wonderful feeling about this whole thing.

eric case is pretty much the last person from the early era of Blogger to leave the blogger team at Google. he is probably the nicest guy you will ever meet, retardedly handsome, and spiritual to a point that even i will never achieve. bro’s got it all.

and after today he will have the best thing of all: freedom.

heres what he wrote on his blog last week announcing it all:

After college I spent all of 2002 backpacking around the world, logging into Internet cafes in different cities to update my weblog about the trip. In early 2003 I’d just gotten back online in Thailand after spending a month without Internet access in Burma, and I read news of Google’s acquisition of Blogger. This’ll sound way geeky, but it really felt like one of those, “Where were you when ___ happened?” moments. Overnight it legitimized and validated what a small-but-growing number of people like me were doing back then – publishing and sharing our thoughts and lives on the web.

My friend Katie was working on AdWords at the time, and I emailed her right away. “Katie — lemme know when Blogger starts hiring! It doesn’t matter what for — I just wanna work on it!” I’d been a Blogger user since 2000, and had just moved to my Aunt’s couch in Woodside after my travels wound down (meaning: I’d spent all my cash on the road). Katie invited me to lunch at Charlie’s (at the original GooglePlex), and showed me the little room in Building π where the Blogger guys were hacking away on their laptops. We bumped into Shellen in a snack room, and I interviewed with the team a few weeks later.

I joined Google in April, 2003 as a member of Blogger’s Support Team — we answered lots of email tickets, and built out a fantastic Help site. I took on additional responsibility whenever I could though – Jason Goldman asked me to help with some project management, starting with our first pass at localization. I lead the testing team when Kimmy went on leave. I made lots of mocks with Biz. I helped with several acquisitions, and liaised with Karen to help with PR’s corporate-blogging efforts. I represented Blogger and Google at several conferences around the world, speaking about the democratization of the web and our efforts to spread web publishing far and wide.

I became Blogger’s Product Manager after Goldman left Google in August, 2006. I’m rather atypical as far as Google PMs go — I studied Classics in the mid-west, and aside from the learning-by-doing I’d done thus far at Google, I had no prior experience with software engineering. I’m incredibly thankful to have been given this opportunity, and trusted with the role.

April, 2008 marks five years for me at Google, and it’s time to move on

during the time that Blogger was acquired by Google there were some very rough times with the software. every now and then i would have to write an email to find out what was up. even though there were millions of people using blogger i was always able to contact someone at the company who would be very nice to me and keep me informed with what i could expect.

over the last few years blogger has been pretty much flawless. so when i chatted with eric it was only really for happy reasons. at sxsw last month we had some really great conversations about meditation and relationships and music. it was awesome. and in a few weeks we will be at coachella with some of his friends and one of my friends. it should be a great, long weekend. one that he deserves.

and yes, the busblog will buy him more than a few rounds because this thing youre reading here would not be the same if it wasnt for guys like eric case – one of the many angels who busted ass behind the scenes to make this blogosphere happen.