Obviously I never met Bill. (I never met anybody) But way back when, I think he recognized my handle from WebmasterWorld and whenever I was on the Twitter ranting about this that or the other Google thing (which used to be a lot), he'd almost always offer some words of advice or encouragement. I was always hella flattered; Bill is the OG's OG after all. (It's very difficult to refer to him in the past tense. So I won't.) More recently, we both seemed to hit a bad patch of bad health issues around the same time, and we would occasionally commiserate about that. Even knowing that, it was still shocking to hear he's passed. I'd like to think that wherever he is, he's still by the sea.