Harry Lewis, former Dean of Harvard College, is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at Harvard. In 2003 he was honored with the title of Harvard College Professor in honor of his teaching excellence. Over more than thirty years of teaching, Lewis has helped launch thousands of Harvard undergraduates into careers in computer science. He is the author of five books on computer science and co-author of Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness after the Digital Explosion (2008).

Randal C. Picker is the Paul H. and Theo Leffmann Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Chicago Law School. He is also a senior fellow at The Computation Institute of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory and has for a number of years taught a class at the Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago. Picker’s recent research has focused on questions relating to copyright, antitrust and network industries. He is co-author of the book, Game Theory and the Law, as well as a textbook on secured transactions.

Siva Vaidhyanathan is a cultural historian and media scholar, and is currently an associate professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia. The Chronicle of Higher Education has called Vaidhyanathan “one of academe’s best-known scholars of intellectual property and its role in contemporary culture.” His blog, googlizationofeverything.com is a book in progress, dedicated to exploring the process of writing a critical interpretation of the actions and intentions behind the cultural behemoth that is Google, Inc.

Esther Dyson is well qualified to opine on Google. In 1997, she wrote Release 2.0: A Design for Living in the Digital Age, about the impact of the Internet on individuals and society. She has followed Google almost from its inception, and had (and sold) pre-IPO shares (through Kleiner Perkins). She is an investor in and director of two relevant companies: 23andMe, co-founded by Sergey Brin’s wife, and Yandex, Russia’s leading search engine, with approximately 60-percent market share to Google’s 20.

Jim Harper is director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute. A nationally recognized privacy, Internet, and technology policy expert, Jim has testified in Congress a half-dozen times and in state legislatures nationwide. He advises the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on privacy issues, and his book Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood made him a leading fighter against a U.S. national identity system. Jim’s legislation tracking site WashingtonWatch.com sometimes rakes in more than ten dollars a day using Google AdSense.

Jeff Jarvis is writing a book, WWGD? – What Would Google Do?, that reverse-engineers the company’s success and applies those lessons and laws to other industries. He writes about media and technology on his blog, Buzzmachine.com and for the Guardian. Jarvis is director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He was creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly and Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News.