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Google: Have A Mobile Product Idea? Give It To Us!

Could Google possibly be running out of ideas for new and interesting mobile products? Probably not, but that's not stopping Google from asking Joe Public to contribute some gems. Google recently set up a new Web site where users can submit their brilliant concepts for new mobile applications.

If you pay attention to Google at all, you know that the company has a seemingly endless supply of new product ideas. Many of them are debuted in beta fashion, where they are used by the general public and tweaked over time. The ideas are mostly generated internally by Google staffers. Now, Google is reaching out to the common man and asking him/her to contribute for the greater good.

Google writes in a recent blog post, "While we do read your comments on the mobile blog and help forum, we're happy to announce our new Product Ideas page that will give you a more collaborative way to get your product ideas heard not only by us, but by others as well. The new page, built on Google Moderator, allows you to submit ideas that others can view and rate so you can see what other Google mobile users think about it, too. This way some ideas will be voted up and others will be voted down. From this we'll be able to see more clearly what's important to you and we'll take it into consideration as we move forward with developing our products."

If you're full of great ideas for mobile products, but perhaps lack the coding chops to create them yourself, here is a golden opportunity. As of this morning, there were already over 700 ideas submitted, which have been voted on nearly 40,000 times.

What I really like is the community aspect of the Product Ideas Page. Because users have the power to rate product ideas, it will act as a nice gauge to guide Google. The ratings will help generate a ranking of sorts, with more popular applications being ones that are more likely to be developed. Google didn't come out and explicitly say it will take the ideas and develop them into final products, but that is the implication.

I perused the ideas, and some of them are genuinely interesting. One receiving the highest ranking is: "Manage Google Calendar on Google Mobile (add, update, delete an event with all functionalities of the web application) (ex Phone : Iphone)."

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