I was there at AOL with Kevin for 2003 and 2004 as the UI designer for AOL Search. I can attest to the size and severe angle of the uphill battle he had. He scaled it spectacularly! We tried to fight some of the same issues from a UI stand point and couldn’t win many of them on our own. BUT, with Kevin fighting from the other direction success was at hand. Kevin’s arguments carried much more weight in many cases because he had a way to prove increased $$ if changes were made. Even more stunning (at AOL anyway) is that Kevin was able to make the non-technical people start to believe in and truly think out standards. I always made it a point to check with Kevin to see if my suggested UI was going to cause any problems but the business people actually started to do it on many occasions as well… “Let’s check with Kevin to see if this will work”. So, major kudos to you Kevin!!