Inspire Google With Your Ideas

Google has opened its welcoming arms to all who want to share their opinions and creative ideas, but don’t expect to see any compensation.

Sign in with your Google account and type away. Google is asking for your help in improving their products and creating new and innovative ideas on their community idea site. Any idea you submit will receive feedback and be voted on by other users. Google employees will scroll through the ideas and give special attention to those that are most popular.

Though your idea may become popular, that doesn’t mean it will be used by Google. If your idea is used you may receive a mention on their product ideas blog, but that’s all you’ll ever receive from the company. You won’t be getting paid by Google, so if you have a great idea it’s probably better to keep it to yourself and try to make a buck with it on your own. The following explanation of the idea community is from the Google Product Ideas Blog:

At Google, we know we’ve got some really great users with some really great ideas, and we’re excited to open up a new project called Product Ideas, a platform through which we’re taking a new approach to feedback for Google mobile products. Whether it’s a feature request, a crazy idea, a rave or a rant, we want to hear it. Even more, we want other users to hear it, to see what others are buzzing about, and to be able to vote on all these ideas.

This is also a gathering ground for Google product reviews and remarks. Users can share what they do and don’t like about certain Google products they have been using. This isn’t a help center, but it is a great place to check out what issues others are having with Google products. Google benefits from this by learning the experiences customers are having with their products and what aspects of their products are most favored or disliked. Users benefit from the community because they can learn much about a product from others before making purchasing decisions.

Basically all of this is a way for Google to conduct some free marketing research and give users the opportunity to feel more involved with the company. The product ideas page has only been active for two weeks, but it has already seen hundreds of ideas submitted by thousands of users which have contributed 50,000+ votes.

I’m sure Google isn’t the only business checking out these ideas. Again I advise you to be wary about submitting anything you’ve invested some serious time into. You’re not going to get discovered by posting in this community, your ideas will just get stolen. This website is if you have specific ideas on how Google products can improve, not a place to splurge out all the creative imaginings you’ve ever had. Give Google your ideas and requests in hopes that they will listen and improve their products to your liking, not in hopes of achieving anything more.

Otherwise I think this is a fantastic service from Google and a great way to waste some time on the web. You’ll get lots of information and opinions on products and be able to talk about some interesting ideas with fellow tech-connoisseurs. Your gain is that Google is listening to you and is building its products and company based on what you (the customer) want.