But at least they’re trying, right? Absolutely. I’m glad they are. But it would be awesome if the brilliant minds at Google worked on something everyone reading this would actually want to buy. Not something we probably won’t see for years, maybe even decades.
Yeah! I mean, who wants Gmail, Google Search, Chrome, Android, YouTube, AdWords, Google Apps, Maps, and so on, and so forth. All useless stuff nobody wants!
How dare Google focus on more than immediate financial gain, and instead focus on trying to make the roads safer, or helping diabetics, or trying to explore the potential applications of wearable computing! All activities of every company ever should always and exclusively be focussed on immediate financial gain and shareholder returns, or else they’ll get brilliant bloggers who contribute so much to the world complaining they can’t spend their money right now, right away, now, now!
Google’s ‘moonshots’, or the stuff Microsoft does at Microsoft Research, might not immediately satisfy the grubby little hands of entitled consumers, but thank god they’re doing it.
“I mean, who wants Gmail, Google Search, Chrome, Android, YouTube, AdWords, Google Apps, Maps, and so on, and so forth. All useless stuff nobody wants!”
Most of these are actually quite successful. Brain dead article …
That’s Thom being sarcastic. It’s not part of the article, it’s part of the summary.
This requires a facepalm or two.
Its myopic to see Glass as it currently is and not for what it can potentially be, the product, if it ever does see the light of day will most definitely be cheaper, less awkward, and more commercially viable.
The point is to at least have this conversation. Smart phones weren’t for everybody, right up until they were. These things are gradually iterated on until they work.
I think Google should at the very least publish how some of its research products have impacted its shipping products. I’m sure a lot of their research improved Gmail, YouTube, Google Search, etc.
lol … Myopic … Glasses
The original article referenced written by Om Malik is more reasonable. Contact lenses for diabetics is problematic because people with diabetes have extra complications when it comes to contact lenses. I did not know this and now I’m glad I do.
I don’t necessarily agree with the rest of Om Malik’s criticism that Google is treating a human problem as an engineering problem. But that’s like saying Florence Nightingale was wrong for trying to address hospital hygiene with numbers and not crying over the dead and setting up charities to provide free funerals.
However, the article that quotes Malik completely misses the point of Malik’s and says:
Really, arsehole? You quote a guy with legitimate concerns about diabetes technology and you somehow twist that into something all about you and your worthless desire to be presented with something you want to waste your money on?
I’m as self opinionated as… well, let’s close that there.
But who the **** is “ABDEL IBRAHIM”?
When I was over in the states I picked up a wonderful phrase.
“Opinions are like ass-holes. Everyone’s got on and they all stink”
Naturally this statement is self paradoxical but that doesn’t stop me liking it and quoting it here.
If he’s this person http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_Abdel_Rehim_Ibrahim_Ahmed
then I’d suggest that doesn’t even come close to “notable”.
In short – I feel I’ve wasted my time even pointing this out.
Flat design, huge pictures, light gray text on white background, oceans of white space everywhere except where needed, short whiny self important “articles” …
The whole site feels like satire.
Don’t forget: unnecessary animations for everything.
Why display something immediately, when with a little extra code you can make the user wait for it.
Why display something immediately is a good question. Its because it is something that’s shocking to see, there’s no context given to the state change.
Animations (while often misused, I’ll grant you that) are an interaction designer’s best friend. Great design is about more than just looks, and when used right animations are as valuable as anything else (negative space, typography, etc.)
I might be missing something but the only thing I saw were a few hover animations here and there.
I think the only sin here (aside from the terrible writing) is the contrast in the text. Doesn’t make for optimal reading.
The negative space is used very effectively to focus attention on the article however.
It looks to me like they are trying to rip off Medium.com in structure, but failing miserably on content. Medium is meant for long-form, thought provoking articles, with annotations, collaboration, and commentary flowing throughout the piece. This was almost a bad parody.
I find it very interesting that he neglects to mention the original article, wherein Om Malik makes some very reasonable points about this particular research project.
Oh well at least he thanks god in the end…. lol….
Even those points are most likely things that this researcher and all the other specialists behind this project are well aware of. Just because these lenses will not be a good fit for every diabetic does not make them useless or any less valuable.
The problem with thinking about Google and it’s ‘products’ is that Google’s actual business (and hence it’s business strategy and hence it’s products) are significantly more obscure than most of the other big tech players. Are Google’s free offerings ‘products’ in any traditional sense and if so who are the customers for those products and how does Google seek to monetise them (and hence run a viable profit making business)? Who are the actual customers for something like Gmail, is it the people who use it as a free email service or is it the purchasers of advertising who pay Google to target ads based on data collected from the users of Gmail?
There is an interesting commentary on Google’s business by Horace Dediuat Asymco, it’s here
http://www.asymco.com/2014/01/17/googles-three-ps/
Here is a quote from the article:
Do you prefer to be treated as a set of eyeballs, or as a walking wallet?
I didn’t post about my personal preferences, and I don’t even think about my preferences in those terms anyway. I was offering up some thoughts on the rather unique way Google goes about being a business. What interests me about the various tech giants is how they differ when it comes to business strategy and business model and how those differences intersects with current tech and tech market trends.
Having lived through the PC revolution back in the 1980s it’s really interesting to be living through another revolution. The dispersal of computing into a web of interconnected devices and services is such a fascinating profound paradigm shift and none of us really know how things are going to pan out.
Just answer the question. Do you prefer to be treated as a set of eyeballs, or as a walking wallet?
A one-word answer is enough.
Actually Thom I prefer to be seen as someone interested in an adult discussion.
Thank you for your answer to my question.
“Services” is a better term for Google’s offerings. The “product” is the data they sell.
The people who pay Google for the data from these services. The people just using the services are data-sources and, unwittingly, a secondary marketing-machine.
Google doesn’t really need to monetize their customers, there is always need for more Big Data and it is only a growing market. They sell ads, sure, but their primary concern is the collection of statistics and selling that out — how many people visit this or that content at any given time of a day, a month, a year, from what region, what sorts of events coincide with these visits, if there is a growing or declining trend, and so on.
For the end-users of their services, ie. “data-sources, ” it’s in Google’s best interests to make things that are interesting, can be seen as “altruistic” so as to generate goodwill, flashy things that raise Google’s name from time to time on peoples’ lips — word-of-mouth is one of Google’s most important marketing-machines for their services, and word-of-mouth only works well if the message being delivered in mostly positive. As such all these long-term projects and whatnot make perfect sense, they’re catchy, they’re trendy, they make Google look good in the eyes of the general public, and that correlates with more users for their services and therefore more data.
For every thousand bad ideas that get tried, only one turns out to be actually useful.
This is how true innovation happens, and you can’t get that one good idea without trying those thousand bad ideas.
So, maybe a blood-sugar monitoring contact lens isn’t the most useful thing for most diabetics. That doesn’t mean the lessons learned won’t apply to other technology.
Same with Google Glass. Maybe it wont’ be successful as-is, but that doesn’t mean lessons learned from it won’t be what makes the next dissimilar product from taking off. This is how true research happens – no specific goal or promise of monetary gain, just research for the sake or research. Try something, see if it works, if not, take what you learned and try something new. Don’t stop to ask if something will work before you try, instead, try, then ask if it did work.
Dear Tom. You have used sarcasm to prove a point. The validity of your arguments is now non-existant.
“and instead focus on trying to make the roads safer”
They’re going about that all wrong. The solution is in demolishing the roads, replacing them with rail, and setting up PRT everywhere.
No driving -> no driving accidents.
Advocacy for rail and green energy is better for people and the planet, but the improvement of AI needs a use-case to be considered worthwhile, so…
Edited 2014-01-19 23:23 UTC
Well, you don’t HAVE to demolish the roads. They would still be good for cyclists and other short distance human or small motor powered wheeled transportation.
Demolishing the roads is quite a waste of money. Repairing is a different issue and I would think as existing roads wear down, though at a much slower rate if only bikes etc are used, replace the damaged parts of the road with a slightly cheaper material as time goes on.
Edited 2014-01-20 01:31 UTC
That’s a good point, but I was mostly for demolishing in order to use the space for rail.
You’re right that footpaths and cycle-paths should be placed alongside it, though.
The money is the reason why it’s not going to happen: libertarianism and neo-liberalism decries anything that requires governmental spending, and private ownership of infrastructure which should be a monopoly due to space used (water pipes, optical fibre, rail, power lines) is undoubtedly bad.
So, unless we can have a resurgence in socialist thinking, we’re stuck with propelling heavy metal tins containing people along an unguided surface at high speed.
So, every alley, every back road, every logging road, every other single purpose/lightly traveled road will be converted to rail transport only?
….
Yeah, that’ll work.
(/sarcasm off)
Alleys and backroads are for walking along; no need for transport unless you’re disabled – if you are, you are probably using a footpath-friendly mobility-enhancing tool already.
Logging roads are a bad example too; they’re usually dirt and not available to the public, but the ones that are sealed would be more efficient with freight trains.
PRT is a small, single-person pod that moves along rail, just like we have with cars except that you use government property instead of your own.
With better city design (think circular), it is infinitely superior in every way.
Edited 2014-01-21 22:36 UTC
Don’t you think there are simpler ways, promotion of public transport and bikes for example?
“Thomas, you can rant all you want, but I won’t pay you anything for years to come”.
Never mind making stuff we don’t want, what about dropping stuff we do want? Like Google News.
And that’s a weird one to drop for a data mining company. Google News was a very easy method of seeing what people are interested in.
A smarter person would see an opportunity there.
Google wants to become essential to everyone’s daily life. Then they will move and take over politically and we will all become part of the Googleplex.(aka Borg)
This -> http://search.slashdot.org/story/14/01/19/1420244/actually-its-goog…
makes some good points.
My use of Google is only for search. Even there I try to use different systems (or VM) for different topics.[1]
Adwords etc are all blocked (I used to work for one of their now defunct competitors so I know how your data is used ‘to promote relevance’). Gmail? well I had a Gmail account to register my long defunct Android phone and even that used an alias.
[1] I don’t know how effective this might be but doing work related searched on one system, personal stuff on another and searches related to my hobbies on another can’t do an harm. The same goes for my other half.
They relate so much information all it takes is one mistake really before they could figure out your 2 separate online identities are probably the same person.
For starers most my gmail accounts were created back when gmail was beta and I had to email myself a referral to create a new account. Even if I used separate accounts on different devices its probably already too late for me.
Even if you spin up a VM for your other identity you still connect from the same IP address. If you murdered someone tomorrow and hid the VM you used to Google how to do it they would likely still find your history.
I am not saying you are wrong for trying to quarantine some online activity into different unique identities for an attempt at privacy but the different VM’s might be a lot of work for nothing.
You could probably do almost the same thing just using a different browser and configuring a decent proxy (that doesn’t forward on your IP info in requests) or using Tor.
Thank good they’re giving all your data to the NSA, too, eh comrades?