{"id":7314,"date":"2018-03-25T20:43:08","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T00:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/google\/"},"modified":"2018-03-26T10:53:40","modified_gmt":"2018-03-26T14:53:40","slug":"google-voice-search","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/google-voice-search\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Voice 性视界"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you\u2019re a multinational tech kaiju spending billions on research and development per year, it\u2019s only natural to think of some creative ways to get more bang for your buck. Google, which expensed some $16.6 billion<\/a> (15% of net revenues) on R&D in 2017, has been a leader in harnessing the wisdom and manpower of crowds to achieve more cost-efficient research outcomes.\u00a0The company’s engineers and managers have demonstrated exceptional flexibility in tailoring the structures of crowd engagements to incentivize optimal participation for specific projects, such as open competition for a large bounty (the Little Box Challenge<\/a>) or harvesting location data from a passive crowd of providers (Google Traffic<\/a>, Parking<\/a>, Trips<\/a>, various business data<\/a>, and so on.)<\/p>\n

In 2011, when Google wanted to expand Voice 性视界 to new languages, international program managers enlisted the help of local users in several countries for the Word of Mouth Project. \u201cReally, we couldn\u2019t have done it without them,\u201d wrote Linne Ha, one of the project managers, in her notes<\/a>\u00a0on the experience. Rather than paying to license speech and text data from an external repository, Google realized that better and more robust data sets could be obtained directly from users. Using phones provided by Google, hundreds of volunteers recorded voice samples alongside their friends and family, and then later assisted in beta testing as the launch window approached. With thousands of hours of raw data, Google was able to build a world-class, fully localized product that was dynamic enough to interpret regional dialects and idiomatic speech.<\/p>\n

Incentives and market design<\/strong><\/p>\n

Google\u2019s brand, built on its\u00a0mission<\/a> to provide \u201caccess and technology for everyone,\u201d is now one of the most recognized in the world. The program managers were able to leverage the brand to recruit volunteers who were simply big fans of Google and eager to contribute their time for the intangible satisfaction of assisting the company. While it’s likely that many participants were also motivated by the perceived utility of accessing localized Voice 性视界 in the future, there is no evidence to suggest Google offered financial incentives beyond a free phone for data recording.<\/p>\n