Slashdot Mirror
Google Wants You To Be Its Unpaid Muse
theodp writes "So where do you turn to for great ideas when tough times force you to abort your engineers' brainchildren? If you're Google, reports Nicholas Carlson, you simply outsource brainstorming to your users. Google's launched a new Google Product Ideas blog as well as a Product Ideas for Google Mobile site where users can submit feature and product ideas and vote on others. So what's in it for you if you come up with Google's next billion-dollar-idea? 'If you post an idea or suggestion and we put it into action, we may give you a shout out on our Product Ideas blog,' explains Google, 'but we won't be compensating users for their ideas.' Lucky thing don't-be-evil Googlers don't have to live up to the IEEE Code of Ethics, or they might have to credit properly the contributions of others." So what's wrong with a shout out among consenting adults?
Don't contribute to their ideabox. It's not like Google is forcing people to contribute. Why is that too difficult for the article submitter to understand?
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
"So what's wrong with a shout out among consenting adults? "
For those who envision the domination of a gift economy. Now's your chance to make it happen. First software, now ideas.
*Aka "ideas want to be free".
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
How could this be illegitimate, if it does not intend to hide or mislead Google's intentions?
Why shouldn't they ask for ideas from users? It's part of any business relationship that both sides profit. Since I rarely click on ads, I've probably gotten more use out of google products than they got in return. If I had a good idea, I'd have no problem to let them know. At the least, their products get better and I get to use the cool new feature. Most of the ideas are probably worthless to individuals anyway, since they might only be a feature, not a product.
Plus, all the ideas are out in the open for everyone to see, so any competitor is free to implement them as well.
Fleur de Sel
...makes you unpaid advertisers.
Other people create the articles, we create the original content that draw people to this site. People love having a soapbox where they think others will listen to their ideas. So I don't understand the tone of the summary.
OTOH, years ago, people working at Nintendo (USA) told me that when they recieved letters, they put them in the trash as soon as it became apparent it was an "idea" letter for a game. They didn't want the liability. How is google going to curb this aspect?
This is ridiculous. Should /. have paid the guy who submitted this? What about me for all the moderation I have done? Should my company pay people who fill in customer satisfaction surveys?
/. "google really is evil" meme. I mean, jeez, here we're jumping on them for doing standard market research. When they do something that really is evil (like when Microsoft killed netscape), that will be news.
I am really getting tired of this
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
Most people I know (myself included) have a lot of ideas, both good and bad, but have no idea or resources to make the idea into a marketable and/or profitable idea. The fact that your idea could be made real by anyone else and accessible worldwide is pretty much its own thing to brag about.
As I keep telling our sales people, there is something of a gulf between having an idea and actually implementing it. Also, an invention is supposed to solve a problem, not just to state it. I may think it is a good idea to find a way of checking the extent to which bears poo in the woods, but when someone patents the improved device and process for facilitating mensuration and analysis of the sylvan/urban mass ratio of ursine faeces, I really shouldn't expect to profit.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
patent the idea, and then submit it to Google's box while you work on the idea.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Before I make a comment on this article, you're going to have to compensate me. Or did you think you could steal people's time for some free comments?
If this was a report about Ubuntu brainstorm, pretty much the same thing, it would be a glowing review? Why can a for profit company not employ the same techniques?
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
The article mentions that Google won't be compensating submitters, then quotes like holy writ the IEEE code of conduct which mentions crediting them.
Last time I looked, those words weren't synonyms.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
...with absolutely f*** all to do right now as we only have one real product, search, and we're hesitant to make big changes to it... Please give us the ideas we obviously cannot think up on our own so we can give these guys/gals something to do because bored smart people tend to leave no matter how good the bennies are." ;)
Loading...
My God, how far can this go? Google has the audacity to listen to its customer and actually use the better ideas?
A way to finally contact Google? It's so difficult to get in contact with them normally - even if you're paying them (in the case of AdWords). Perhaps we can finally start talking to real people at Google, or at least have them read some of our grievances.
I rent game servers, see my homepage for more information
If you're a zebra, it's not paranoid or delusional to think that a lion will eat you first chance it gets. It's the nature of the beast. Yes, you might have found the one lion in all the jungle that was raised in a vegan commune, or that doesn't have a taste for zebra; but that's an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.
If you're an ordinary citizen, it's not paranoid or delusional to think that a large for-profit corporation will screw you first chance it gets. It's the nature of the beast - the corporation that doesn't maximize its short-term profits by any means necessary gets hit by shareholder lawsuits. Yes, you might have found the one multinational corporation in all the world that has found a way to keep profits high without screwing anyone over; but that's an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
To say it is the truth that something is evil just because you don't have 100% access to information proving it is paranoid, as it is defining everything you don't know everything about as evil.
You said they were evil, if that isn't what you meant retract it and state what you did mean. If you did then don't obfuscate the issue with irrelevant things you didn't call them ;)
So it's guilty until proven innocent, then?
Unfortunately, there are enough people with this point of view who will never be satisfied. It's almost akin to a conspiracy theory in that if things were made completely transparent and all the facts and evidence were laid out, some people would still maintain that a complete lack of any evidence of evilness or wrongdoing just proves that the organization is hiding something and really is evil.
Google probably isn't evil, but that doesn't mean that they're saints either. There's a pretty large gray area between the two where most people, companies, and organizations tend to operate. Some people, for whatever reason, tend to blur these shades of gray into either black or white. Then again, "Google does some things that I don't like or agree with, but on the whole I find them to be a pretty good company," doesn't generate as many comments or page hits.
You must not be Christian. After all, aren't we all sinners in the eyes of the Lord? Google, being formed of many many people, must therefore be full of sin. Sin is evil. If Google is full of sin, then it must be full of evil.
Therefore, Google is evil.
And so am I... ;)
First, I was commenting on the "unpaid muse". The Muses, the ennead, were daughters of Zeus and so, of course, they didn't get paid. Which was the basis of my (feeble) joke, but was making the serious point that the original idea (inspiration) was attributed to them, while human beings did all the work.
Second, your point about drama, even if correct, is badly made because I did not include the Muse of Drama in my list, as I was making a joke about the RIAA. My point, in fact, was that there is hardly any original music about nowadays, it is almost all derivative, so why does it deserve copyright protection?
Third, your point about drama is just plain wrong. In Athens, plays were put on by nominated rich citizens (if you thought someone else was richer and should put the play on instead, you could swap possessions with him if he refused to agree - an interesting tax system). The rich citizen paid the didaskalos, the chorus, the actors, the musicians and, presumably, the playwright. The prize money nowhere near covered expenses. This was, after all, a religious festival.
Fourth, you have completely missed my point anyway. If someone else has an idea (Hey, Aristophanes, how about writing a play in which jurors are represented by wasps?") Aristophanes does the actual dramaturgic work, and he and his sponsor win the prize. Exactly the same as envisaged here for Google.
So, in summary, my reply to you has to be "brek-ek-ek ex, ko-ax,ko-ax!"- which as everybody knows is what the frogs said to Dionysius.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
how many people / companies pass your arbitrarily high bar for evil?
Plenty do, and yes, Google is actually one of them.
My point got a little lost in the tinfoil hat I appear to have landed on when I posted, but it was moreso that the general opinion is that Google is in no way evil, that they can do no evil, and will do no evil.
I was simply trying to say that by nature of their size and role in the world we live in, they've broken their motto at least once (their foray into the Great Firewall of China is a damn fine example) and that is all it takes.
I'm not saying that Google should be viewed as Evil incarnate, but for fuck's sake, they're not a shining star of morality, kindness, or goodwill either. It's when you compare it to other companies of its stature and influence that Google is the majority player in doing well by individuals, and I think that conveys a good message about them, but it doesn't overrule the bad one either.
Ah well, Karma to spare, eh?
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
All people are evil to a degree. The degree to which we are evil is almost always relative to the amount of power and/or wealth we have obtained.
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
You don't understand. It's not that Google is evil. It's that they're run by space aliens and unicorns. And until you can prove otherwise, it's a fact!