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Google Wants You To Be Its Unpaid Muse

Posted by timothy on from the voluntary-grindstone-for-nose-skinning dept.

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?

7 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. Don't want Google to steal your ideas? by phayes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

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    Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
    1. Re:Don't want Google to steal your ideas? by PFI_Optix · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or, do. I would LOVE if every service provider gave me a place to voice my opinion on how they can improve their service without me having to have the expertise to actually execute the idea.

      An idea is just that: an idea. It's not a product, it's not a service, it's not even the result of a great deal of work. There are a lot of things I'd like to see companies do that I can't begin to make money off of, but I think they could and I would benefit from them. I don't care if they profit off my ideas, my gain is that they are doing what I want.

      Leave it to Slashdot users to find a way to negatively spin it when a company goes to great lengths to give their consumers a voice.

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      120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
  2. There's nothing wrong with it by matt4077 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    Fleur de Sel
  3. Slashdot should pay me! by an.echte.trilingue · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    I am really getting tired of this /. "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.

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    weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
  4. Re:How is that different than /.? by Sen.NullProcPntr · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

    The letters to Nintendo were unsolicited. Google requires you to agree to their TOS before you can post an idea.

  5. Apples to Apples by BecomingLumberg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

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    If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
  6. Re:What meme? by N1AK · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It isn't reasonable. No organisation is run in a completely open manner, with ALL communications (and everything else) logged and released. In fact I doubt any human lives a life with that level of transparency.

    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.

    I never said they're the lapdog of Satan or big brother

    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 ;)