Google to Chrome-plate our shops with creepy mood-sensing AI signs Google is pitching retailers on a total conversion of their floor, register, and warehouse systems to its Chrome, Android, and Cloud platforms. The Chocolate Factory painted a picture for customers of single-use devices linked up through its mobile platforms and managed through a web interface. To help push that idea, Google …
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"Google wants companies to hook their signage up to the new Cloud Video API to manipulate shoppers in real time."
After all, the tried-and-trusted tactic of a big call to action on your search pages with an "Upgrade your experience!"-type strapline only works when the product you want to push people towards using only works when said product is something that can be downloaded... *cough*Chrome*cough*
"You look down – why not buy some stuff to cheer yourself up?"
COMPU-TEACH:
Posit: you are living in a stagnant, declining civilisation. Where are you looking?
PUPIL:
Down.
COMPU-TEACH:
What do you see?
PUPIL:
My shoes.
COMPU-TEACH:
Correct! What do you do to cheer yourself up?
PUPIL:
Uhm… press the button?
COMPU-TEACH:
Incorrect! Think again. Your world is a depressing place; you are looking at your shoes. How do you cheer yourself up?
PUPIL:
I buy a new pair.
COMPU-TEACH:
Correct!
PUPIL:
Can I press the button?
COMPU-TEACH:
All right.
[Button is pressed. A surge of energy]
PUPIL:
Wa-ho! So nice.
Douglas Adams
"The strangest thing about the nightmare street was that none of the millions of things for sale were made there. They were only sold there. Where were the workshops, the factories, where were the farmers, the craftsmen, the miners, the weavers, the chemists, the carvers, the dyers, the designers, the machinists, where were the hands, the people who made? Out of sight, somewhere else. Behind walls. All the people in all the shops were either buyers or sellers. They had no relation to the things but that of possession."
Shevek's thoughts on the department store.
Ursula K Le Guin - The Disposessed
One thing that has always made me far angrier is when I'm clearly sad/angry/generally in a foul mood, and shunning most human company and some (I would assume well meaning) person notices and says something to the effect of "Cheer up! Smile!" without giving any reason for same or offering to assist in any meaningful way. Apparently you're just supposed to smile all the time or it confounds those whose emotional range only includes one or perhaps two moods.
Put your entire operation on our cloud.
Oops - we made a slight configuration error, our cloud (and your company) will be down for a couple of days.
Someone hacked our system. All your company's data, client records, user data such as credit cards, emails and addresses, full personnel records, and a whole lot more is out on the public net for anyone to download.
We have updated our systems to fix a security bug - you must update all your devices throughout your company or they will stop working. You have one week - that's plenty of time.
We've decided to cancel this service, it wasn't making us enough money.
Why would Google do this if there isn't something in it for them, in the form of shoppers' personal information to feed their advertising monster?
They already know what people search for, where they go (if they have an Android) and so forth, so getting a foot in the door of the store can help them put together the final link in the chain of what people buy. So I'm guessing the price for this will be access to who is buying what. That makes their advertising much more valuable as Google will be able to tell which ads were more effective at converting to purchases in brick and mortar stores. They'll know that "single women under 30 with child under the age of two who searched for 'my baby has an earache' responded best to ad X" and put that up on the kiosk screen when she walks by.
I'm sure she won't be creeped out at all if the kiosk screen halfway down the aisle displays an ad for Just For Men as the middle aged guy with a few noticeable gray hairs ahead of her is passing it, then switches to advertising an infant earache remedy as she approaches...
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