Google Wants Your Ideas

With the new year finally here, it’s a good time to look back at the impressive mobile industry innovations of 2008 with Google/T-Mobile’s release of the first Android handset, Apple’s release of the iPhone 3G, or Research In Motion’s first touch phone, the Blackberry Storm. It’s also a good time to think on what could be in store for 2009.

The pace of innovation seems to be accelerating after several years of stagnation. Every day brings another app on the App Store and another handset announcement by one of the world’s carriers.  Evolution appears to be happening before our very eyes. For this basic scientific process to run its course, it requires an ecosystem that is not yet satisfied with the resulting products.  The fittest producers in this new environment have recognized a tipping point that requires a good source of user feedback in order for their innovations to win out. 

Of course you knew Google was one of those fittest players that wants hear what you think. They recently published a new forum to suggest ideas and vote on others. The idea exchange specifically targets Google Mobile products.  At the time of this writing, the top ideas where:

• Manage Google Calendar on Google Mobile (add, update, delete an event with all functionalities of the web application)
• An application that speaks the driving directions in Google maps Useful to use the phone as gps car navigator.
• A “Google Product Ideas” for all google services
• Mobile view of all type of documents in Google Docs
• Google Calendar sync with iPhone, just like Google Contacts and Gmail does now
• Google Talk with multiprotocol capabilities

Normally, Google Mobile users will post ideas, complaints, support issues, etc, to the Google Groups forum.  Here you could always recognize the popular ideas as they usually where followed by “me too…me three…+1” user replies; it’s a bit chaotic.

The new ideas forum adds the crowd features necessary to promote the best ideas and bury the less desirable.  Google developers can then focus on what the majority of users need versus guesswork by product managers or assertions by influential pundits.

Idea systems are not new to the web.  We see them at Digg.com where users promote interesting links posted by other users. Salesforce Ideas offers yet another web-based product that organizes ideas by popularity to help companies make better decisions regarding the future direction of their products and services directly influenced by the consumer.

So, if you ever find yourself wondering why Google doesn’t offer a better mobile mouse trap, here’s your chance to let them know how you’d build one.