Google Mine
Recently Paul Graham (founder of http://ycombinator.com/) tweeted “Will ownership turn out to be largely a hack people resorted to before they had the infrastructure to manage sharing properly? – @paulg.” It seems that Google is taking a shot at that “infrastructure” with Google Mine.
According to http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/, Google has released Google Mine on the internal Google Play Store, Bazaar. With Google Mine users will be able to keep up with and share the “status” of all the real-world items. Some of the interesting status updates one could make with their stuff are “gift received”, “giving away, “had in the past”, “given away”….etc.
It is easy to make comparisons to RPG games like World of Warcraft with their extensive gear and equipment handling capabilities for characters. Many players have obsessions with accumulating and upgrading gear in the virtual world. Maybe this new ability to categorize and share the status of one’s real-world possessions will push the same psychological buttons that WOW uses to hook users into getting that next one-up on their fellow player.
Another interesting application of Google Mine is that it turns everyone into a “stuff library”. Now everyone in your social media circle can be that neighbor that borrows your stuff and never returns it. At least you would have that digital record. Maybe an Ebay like “Feedback Borrower’s Score” is order to help others identify that inevitable mooch in the circle.
Since this app is only available to Google insiders, there is no guarantee that it will be released.
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