On Friday, Matt Cutts returned to the internet after taking a month off. He posted on his blog, what he learned from it.

A HackerNews thread picked it up and asked some questions like how can Matt unplug and depend on figuring out what is going on in the SEO space from just his colleagues at Google? How come Googlers in general don’t respond to user emails? Stuff like that.

So Matt went on the defensive, trying to explain the concept of scaling. Here is his responses:

and

I honestly don’t respond to many emails that ask for my direct response. I just don’t have the time, I wish I did. But most of them are directed at Google anyway, and I am not Google, so why should I respond. 😉

That being said, that is Matt’s rationale for why he wants to spend less time on one-on-one with webmasters and more time with one-on-many with webmasters. Honestly, I can’t disagree.

Forum discussion at HackerNews.