I'm still not sure Google was all that concerned with "flipping the distribution channel" per se. It seems just as likely they just wanted to sell the phone and didn't want to have to go through a carrier to do it, just to get retail experience. Did Google every say that was what they were after, or did the breathless tech-press just feed that meme?
One thing I've noticed is that here reluctance/enthusiasm to study is directly tied to how efficient she feels the studying will be. If she knows she'll get an A because she does effort Y, she will do effort Y. My problem with the school system is that studying is too disconnected from results, and so kids end up feeling like their test results are random. That's a killer.
I hate to break it to you, but by 4th grade, the homework burden is around an hour each night, minimum. My 1st grader is in for 30 minutes each night. And that does not count the 15-45 minutes of reading they might do.
Lots to learn in 4th grade. You can debate the need, or the value, etc., but the fact is she has to pass the state and fed assessments, and that is how the system is setup. Railing against might eventually change it, but my girls are in it rightnow, so you have to play the game.
I think efforts like Wave illustrate how much Google would like to find brand new markets to compete in; I don't think they have had much like getting real advertising dollars out of things other than search.
But you're right at least to a degree -- they have decided that open-ness is better for Google. Whether it is just for search or for other future things is a debatable point I guess.
I agree in the sense that any implementation would have to be soft enough not to be disruptive. But the challenge doesn't seem quite that hard. Web designers are, IMHO, way too concerned with controlling the precise presentation of their pages; when users have outlandish hardware, strange fonts or such, things break spectacularly.
Hey, I was careful to say that my experience of Comcast has been good, and it is clearly an atypical experience. Still, in the vacuum of my experiences, Comcast has been good.
Interestingly, doing the alternative (as suggested in the post) never seems to get tried in large. Tivo, for example, curtailed their beloved lifetime subscriptions, which was a bit like a reward for long term customers.
I agree it is a huge and short-sighted mistake, but I can't come up with an example to show it. It jsut seems to be conventional corporate wisdom with little to base it on.