Is Google stealing your ideas?
by BenthamiteMarch 25th, 2009 at 10:15 AM
Filed under: News Story Commentary, Other Discursive Dialogue
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Let me begin with a simple question: Could Google steal your ideas if you write about them via your Gmail account? It's possible.  The first of these features below I recommended directly to Google (using a Web form) two years ago. The latter, I suggested to a couple friends approximately 1.5 years ago via my Gmail account. Google Inc.'s Gmail Labs has launched an experimental feature called "Undo Send" that gives users a chance to rewrite their message, correct settings or simply fix typos. "Sometimes ... I send a message and then immediately notice a mistake," said Michael Leggett, a Gmail Labs designer and the creator of the "Undo Send" feature" OK, Leggett's team might have created that feature, but he wasn't the first to come up with it. Gmail Labs also recently developed a feature that helps users who forget to add photo or document attachments to their e-mails. Users can turn on a "forgotten attachment detector"; if the program finds the word "attachment" in the e-mail text, a box pops up reminding the user to add an attachment. Gmail engineer Michael Davidson was celebrating St. Patrick's Day last year at a bar when he came up with a feature to help e-mail addicts. Davidson realized he was wasting valuable work time checking e-mails. Davidson was certainly not the first to "come up" with this feature. (And can anyone attest to him being at the bar that night? lol) The point of my article is that "intellectual property" may be a myth when it comes down to the true essence of the concept. Furthermore, I've learned from personal experience that even when you have explicitly clear legal rights to something that was stolen, it still takes money and influence to be able to do something about it. So as for the title of the referenced article, "Where 'Undo Send' and other Gmail ideas are born," I just want to point out that it's quite misleading. Google Labs should not be viewed as the exclusive source of Google ideas; let's resist insulting the general public, for a moment. I have a friend that refuses to use any Google software because he feels that they will monitor, steal, and use the "intellectual property." Is he right?  |
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Google does use your search requests, traffic patterns, and analytical info as a "Crystal Ball" for product development and market research. So does E-bay and Amazon. Unfortunately, one idea will not get Google's attention. But a million people looking for the same thing will.
What this means is that people tend to intellectually evolve as a collective. For example, the helicopter was invented in the U.S. and Russia at the same time. There was not a conspiracy or piracy going on, it just happened based on the collective intelligence of society which allowed the inventors to build upon public knowledge.
This happens all the time. I can't tell you how many ideas I've had that seem to appear on the news weeks after I visualize them...does this mean someone is in my head reading my thoughts? Not likely, it means that someone (or many people) thought of it years before me and made it happen.
This particular idea was my wife idea she thought of 5 years ago. She sent a resume and realized there was a typo and wanted to retract the old email and send a corrected one. Should Google give her a royalty? Perhaps if she fulfilled and packaged the technology, but it was nothing more than a thought.
Google is taking over pretty much everything.... Obamas probably behind this too!
thanks for the heads up. I only use Google to search something.The answer would seem to be to only use the search engine. Google is getting to big, seems like they are taking over everything!
Nope but I'am sure Pelosi, Reed & Geithner will find a way to regulate it till it fails then subsidize and finally seize it. :)