Maybe it's just personal but when I respond a question in SO I feel I am giving back to the community... This feels more like giving it to Google.
Google already monetize their service by making me see ads(which is fair). SO monetize their service by showing me employment opportunities (which to me is better). Google model doesn't need the community to work... The entire SO model is a paying forward knowledge transfer.
But it is not different. They both show ads, and neither would make any money unless the ads had benefit to a significant amount of users.
The only thing SO has done different is better branding towards top contributors, and judging from your post they've done it by targeting ads towards the top contributors.
Except it is. Most people aren't contributing answers on SO about how to use SO. They are contributing answers about how to use JS or C or PHP or how to solve a particular programming problem. SO did not create JS or C or PHP or any other programming language or framework discussed on SO. Google's program is to get people to support products Google created so that Google doesn't have to support its products itself.
Except SO forums contain much more valuable information than official google resources. Also UI of google groups so awful. And google support just a myth, I've never seen any who got any response from them, only a few mentions in internet.
Not sure why you are being downvoted, while I own much of my career to SO for the transfer of esoteric computer knowledge to the public domain, official Google resources haven't done much for me.
Indeed, most of the useful information about Google tools come from SO!
'What do you mean, you posted constructive feedback on that startup idea on HN for free?! You should be getting paid a consulting fee for that service!'
Exactly. Is it me or has there been a noticeable increase in Google gate-brigade posting on HN recently? Things like these, very integral part of the existing internet framework are used for pointless 'big scary Google, Google is the new Microsoft ' imagery. Anyone with data care to do a sentiment analysis/ vote-brigading analysis?
In this instance, people are angry about the fact that Google makes a ton of money from these services but feels no obligation to provide support for them.
Why would people expect more support without actually paying for it?
Google actually does support the free offerings pretty well. They just don't do it on a case by case basis. Anybody who wants that has the option to pay Google to get it.
Otherwise, Google does invest time into making sure it works well for everyone and isn't just letting it all sit out there slowly breaking...
People pay with their privacy. Google's support is generally considered to be somewhere between dismal and nonexistent for most of its services. Clearly, they're making enough money to be doing better.
No one expects intensive 24/7 support for free webmail, but Google's balance of profit and support is off. Free-tier users aren't cattle, especially not when you're tracking them.
How do I keep my @gmail.com address while paying for support? For that matter, where is the paid supported version of Google Voice / Hangouts?
I switched my texting/gv to hangouts on my phone, now I can't add someone that texts me to my contact list without trying to call them first. I also can't seem to SMS someone from hangouts in my contact list on my desktop without manually typing in their phone number. Pretty big UI/UX oversights (or not).
There's really no way to actually get in touch with appropriate googlers. There's no real evidence that product owners participate where the people actually are.
What might be better, would be to approach the StackExchange guys, or even just riff their interface for a google branded services site, and have actual google employees participate. I tend to see a lot of the same lacking regarding general Windows / Microsoft support, but SO/SE fill a lot of the void... I don't think I've really seen googlers participate. Maybe they should bring back that 20% time to participate in either these forums on SO, or GH issues.
StackOverflow is an economy, though. You can spend your points (question bounties), the points serve as an indication of your expertise (eg. to potential employers), and having more points leads to "privileges" on the site. (eg. 200 points => reduced ads)
For the time being, at least, Google's Top Contributor program doesn't seem to offer any practical benefits.
Google already monetize their service by making me see ads(which is fair). SO monetize their service by showing me employment opportunities (which to me is better). Google model doesn't need the community to work... The entire SO model is a paying forward knowledge transfer.
So... At least to they it is not the same thing.