In the aftermath of the 'Reader' episode there has been a
bit
of
'astroturfing' about what it means for all their
products.
Some are
taking advantage of the reasonable dismay at
Google's
withdrawal of this
service to spread FUD, for example:
Google Keep? It'll probably be
with us until March 2017 - on
average | Technology |
guardian.co.uk
The (usually 'Apple-friendly')
Tech Editor produces some
meaningless statistics from experimental,
mainly,
ex-'Google Labs'(!) products to suggest that you can't
trust Google's services ('Keep' is the one in the immediate
firing
line but ... with implications) in general?
Ironically, he had produced an
article the previous
day about "meaningless statistics":
Meaningless
statistic of the day: Samsung Galaxy S4
pre-registration
record! | Technology | guardian.co.uk
where there was
meaning but debatable value to the measure
produced. There
are other examples around the web of this
effort.
The problem for me
is that the ideas and motivation
for
short-lived experiments were "good"
but are now count
against it.
Open trials and discussions of such projects
are good
for
innovation. On the other hand, they are capable of bad
publicity commercially, if people consider such
short-
term
experiments as representative of core services. It
will
result in
increasing pressure to behave in ways that are
"good"
for Google's
multi-billion dollar business model and against
open discussion and
development of innovative ideas.
Reader
(after the attacks by the French
(& European Press) no
longer
makes as much sense as direct competitor
to its own
'News' and 'Google+'?
Commercial pressures on "perception" are
hurting openness
in
innovation. Clearly, we can't go back to a
non-
commercial
Internet - any more than we can return to a pre-nuclear
age.
Once we have eaten of the "apple" from the Tree of
Knowledge
we
all know that we are naked. We just innovative ways
to
encourage
Companies to provide better ways to promote
innovation.
eg Perhaps an
independent version of 'Google Labs' with
sponsor
-ship? I don't know but I
think we need to be thinking
about
such things in terms of their commercial
repercussions
and
finding positive ways, while mitigating effects, to fit
in
with different business models. This might release
other ways
to
innovation through, for example, currently deprecated
'crowdsourced-type' methods. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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