I am constantly amazed at just how many things Amazon is involved in. Though I do not work for them, I am pretty intimately involved with them, and have some insider knowledge, and it blows my mind how many different, random, and seemingly pointless things they work with.
I kinda have hard feeling against them because I feel like they go out of their way to stifle (external) innovation. However they certainly do their best to innovate within their own company. I literally can't think of any other company that throws their money around on experiments to such a degree as Amazon.
As for this project, It is an unique idea, and all it really takes is on home run for the world to take notice, and for them to disrupt the current system. Unfortunately I believe it is the writers' that are the most taken advantage of in Hollywood, and it doesn't seem like this does anything to remedy that. I think it would be better if they gave them $100k on the front end, and 10% on the back end. That way they still get the guaranteed money for their work, but they are compensated if it is a home run hit. That is a better deal than a lot of studios give writers, and so it would actually attract high quality scripts.
It seems like the development cost/time is pretty low on that app as well. Good idea.
I was previously working on an early childhood education app. I didn't get very far until the numbers just didn't make sense. Perhaps I was being too ambitious but the velopment costs were extremely high, and I didn't think I could see it for more than $1.99. So I had to sell quite a few to even turn a profit. It's interesting though that you say even you're obscure apps sell 10 per day. During my research I found many that sold one or two per week. So you must be doing something right.
I think it is admirable that Google is able to look at the long term here.In the short term it is probably not in their best interest to make such a move.
They have a firmhold on the search market, and most of these "spam sites" use Google Adsense to generate their revenue. This means that while Google is improving their search results, and cutting off these spammers, they are also limiting their own revenue generating potential.
But by making this change they are probably going to decrease their revenue in the short term, but improve their search accuracy, and in the long term I am sure this will help them.
I'm wondering what will happen to firms like Demand Media though? Does anyone have any thoughts?