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:The Gift Economy.* (Score:3, Interesting)
ah, but at least with software the GPL forces derived products to still be free, if you gift an idea to Google, they get to keep it as if it was theirs all along.
I wonder if the T&C of the product idea site says you have to cede copyright and any patents to them?
Apples to Apples (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you don't understand yourself (Score:3, Interesting)
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.