Google Wants You To Be Its Unpaid Muse 227
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?
Re:How is that different than /.? (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 [google.com] before you can post an idea.
Re:How is that different than /.? (Score:3, Informative)
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.
Re:How is that different than /.? (Score:1, Informative)
"By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services."
So the license to distribute etc is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display and promote the services. That's quite a narrow limitation. No sublicensing, for a start...
Re:What meme? (Score:1, Informative)
If you're going to claim something, then it's your job to prove it, not the people trying to call you out on your tinfoil hat bullshit.
Re:Apples to Apples (Score:3, Informative)