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
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."
"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".
I think I preferred the old economy where we sold our skills to billion dollar companies.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
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."
All too often, we are brought up on the perspective that the "killer" idea is more important than the execution. It's like some type of get-rich-quick scheme for thinkers. This is one area where the patent system used to work, only granting patents on working models are specific implementations - nowadays it's the "killer idea" which some corp or troll patents, sits on it, and waits for someone else to do the work. Truly novel or killer ideas are uncommon - great execution is more important. I would say that Apple's iPods and iPhone are a testament to this. Not one super novel idea in itself, but a slew of good compromises and vision to see it through. Good execution.
I don't think society progresses far when people hoarde their ideas in the mistaken beliefs that it's all gold (rather than the 99.999% fool's gold that they are) or actually more novel than it really is and not collaborating with anyone. I would look to Paul Erdos as the ultimate example of intellectual collaboration.
The problem is that ideas that seem good are plenty. It's like blades of grass. The problem is getting yours to stick out, so that the corporation actually picks your and pours their resources into executing it. I would imagine it's a good feeling if something actually came out of it.
*Note, I'm talking ideas, not some specific design.
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
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 ;)
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.