Mysterious Google barge is a massive showroom, “party deck”
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Really?
Although I thought Ars did have copy-editors.
So A is just a reference to A, and B has nothing to do with it.
Others have done this before, like Target's holiday-season barge that they parked at Chelsea Piers in NYC:
Nobody in Maine is gonna buy a damn Google Glass! :)
The free publicity of "OMG parties going on at the GoogleBoat!" can't hurt either.
Notice that, despite the fact that the local Portland paper (which is admittedly garbage) has tried to cover this in-depth, they haven't been able to get any information whatsoever about what is going on. Indeed, most of what they have reported is basically just ripping things off from SF reporters.
If you want something done and done quietly, it's best to go somewhere you can easily manipulate the local officials.
Of all places: Maine.
Milk republic? Potato republic? Egg republic? Atlantic salmon republic?
Which, based on my past experience and predictions, most likely means that it is true.
http://inhabitat.com/nyc/new-pier-57-incubox-shipping-contai...
Surely you could put that money to better use.
They're at a point where if they need to woo and wine and dine people into accepting their new supposedly revolutionary product on a party boat, then that's just about the biggest sign of a failure ever. Please tell me where the Google Web Search party boat was? The GMail party boat? How about the Android party boat? The Google Chrome party boat? Did they need a YouTube party boat after they bought YouTube or didn't they need a party boat because YouTube party boated before?
If you have a product, make it awesome like any of the above and that should be enough. If the first step to changing society as fundamentally as this is hyped to do, then inviting hipsters and celebrities of the bourgeoisie onto a party boat for some Gatsbying leaves me rather disappointed.
Like someone on Ars Technica said:
> I guess this is what happens when a company has more money than it has uses for and slips into hedonism.
You know what would be cool? If they sailed this thing out to the open sea, and worked together with a company that's laying some transoceanic fibre and tapping into that. And Google might in that way have a data centre in international waters. Would it be useful? Who knows. But it would be a cooler thing to do with a bloody barge than this.
Glass, on the other hand, needs to sell buyers on a whole new product category. Also, as a very conspicuous accessory, it needs to make a strong positive fashion statement.
Do I know that a floating expo is the best way to accomplish what Google's setting out to do? No, but I'm not convinced it isn't.
As logicallee was saying, if speculation concerning nautical data centers hadn't percolated, nobody would be upset if/when that proves unfounded.
Or maybe it's a self-driving ship.
will togas be issued?
Seriously, no. Someone is having a good laugh over at Google.
I'm not a naysayer about the product in general (although I am not a fan of google), but I have used Glass, and it is far from being a usable consumer product.
Iteration will change that. However I have doubt that that have got to that point yet.
If this is article is accurate, then I think the operative words are 'invitation only'. The idea would be to get massive celebrity endorsement to create desire without real consumers actually experiencing the product.
So far Glass has done a great job of making Google not look like a boring copycat. If they can keep this up and launch a great product at some point, it will turn out to be a masterpiece of marketing.