Offer four Pixel 3 phones for loan

[#1]

I've heard a lot of Local Guides say, "I want Google to give us all nice phones." However, with the tens of millions of Local Guides out there, that idea is pretty impractical. But a lot of the Local Guides who are requesting this don't have access to a nice, easy way of taking very clear, nice pictures. A good camera would be cheaper than a good phone, but there are a lot of benefits to having a phone, such as easy and immediate uploading while you're at the business, and you can only do that with a phone.

So, my idea is to start out with only 4 Pixel phones, and do a rental program, just like with the StreetView loan program, https://www.google.com/streetview/loan/ .  They'd still be Google-owned phones, we could have a maximum rental period of 3 months, make the applicant fill out an application first, and take the phone back if they don't contribute to Google Maps every week.

I think that India and some African countries would be ones that really benefit with this (I think those are countries where I've heard the most requests for free phones), but I'm willing to start a prototype program in Thailand, to help prototype if this is even a good idea.

[AgentMorph]

You're taking about level 10 Guides, right? It's just too easy for people to scam the program and get a phone, unless you restrict it to the highest, most trusted tier.

I'd like to see more Beta testing for level 8+ Guides, depending on the product. Maybe Level 10 could Beta test new Pixel phones as the come out.

[JosephDewey]

@AgentMorph , actually, I'm talking about a pilot program with just 4 phones, that would probably be loaned for a month at a time for usually users of level 4-8. Eventually, they'll get lost or broken or not returned, but I think that with 4 phones, then we could get 2-3 years of great experiences and great photography with dozens of different people.

So, I'm not picturing something universal. Even if Google did a Level 10 requirement, then they'd still get scammers. I could probably take an empty account up to Level 10 in just a few days if I wanted to.

What I'm picturing instead is I'm picturing someone like me in each country where they do this, being the one who screens and loans the phones, usually only to people who have been active in Local Guides meetups. Just doing that would get rid of scammers by 99%.

So, it would be similar to Google's Backpack camera loan program, except it would be run by someone in the country. So, users requesting a loan would have to attend a meetup, and probably write at least a paragraph or two about how they'd use the phone to contribute to Google Maps. Then someone like me would deliver the phone, and then collect it again a month later. I'm estimating that 80-90% of phones would get returned after each loan, so we should still have a phone or two after 2 years, if we start with 4.

I thought about just starting with 1 phone...which we could do, too. Then it would be a really cheap experiment on Google's side.

[RamonTurista]

I am a level 7, I will recommend to start at level 7

[BorrisS]

Hello @JosephDewey,

We would like to thank you for your idea, but we did not manage to implement it in time. According to our Idea Exchange policies we are going to close your idea.