
Google sends Cr-48 to "Will it Blend?" - antimatter15
http://www.gstatic.com/chromeos/demolab/video/blend.mov
======
bdb
This is particularly awesome because my Cr-48 came with a piece of paper that
said something like:

"Do not crush, incinerate, blend (guess we'll never find out if it'll
blend...), ...(several other things)..."

~~~
cypherpunks01
The full first paragraph of the Safety Notice:

This product contains sensitive components. Do not drop, disassemble, open,
crush, bend, bake, deform, puncture, blend (guess we'll never know if it'll
bend), shred, incinerate, paint, bring to the moon, or insert foreign objects
into the device. Do not spill liquids, rocks of any size, or food on the
device. Do not expose the device to water, moisture or rap music.

It keeps going... :)

~~~
alex_c
The entire thing (from Reddit):

<http://i.imgur.com/hA2Fd.jpg>

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guiseppecalzone
Google did another advertisement where they destroy at least 5 laptops:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-
Vnx58UYo&feature](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-Vnx58UYo&feature)

I used to think that "Will it blend" was funny. Maybe the novelty of it has
warn off. Instead of laughing, watching this video made me wince.

~~~
riobard
I had the same weird feeling watching that video. There is something
fundamentally wrong there. I'm especially worried about the last part when the
little girl destroying the last CR-48: she was so calm to do that without a
blink. I was shocked. This is not the way we teach our children.

[edit]: there's a tagline said by the demo guy in the video: “good thing I get
a new one every time”. This kinda thinking bothers me.

~~~
cma
Almost the entire advertising industry is pure waste, whether they are
physically destroying laptops or not.

~~~
axod
WTF?

I know it's cute to be all anti-advertising here, but really?

Shows a distinct lack of a clue about what service advertising offers people,
why it's crucial, and why it makes a ton of money for all involved.

Advertisers don't waste money. They carefully use money by investing it in
advertising which (when done properly) nets them a positive ROI.

~~~
cma
Secretly murdering people and then robbing their house has a positive ROI for
the murderer too; what a bogus form of argument. You don't look at one party's
ROI, you look at the costs and benefits for everyone.

~~~
axod
advertising rarely causes anyone harm.

~~~
cma
Two companies (let's say Coke and Pepsi) are engaged in an advertising war.

Coke hires a graphic designer to draw a cool logo.

Pepsi has to fire back and do the same.

In the end both of their brand statures remain them same, and two artists who
would rather have spent their time working on something else had their time
wasted, due to a particular incentive structure.

Everyone acted in their own interest, and individually had a positive ROI. Yet
collectively, the ROI was negative. Coke's action had a negative externality
on Pepsi; Pepsi fired back with an action that had a negative externality on
Coke.

------
kurtsiegfried
I find it somewhat ironic that this video will not play on my CR-48.

~~~
antimatter15
It's meant to be played from <http://www.google.com/chromeos/demolab/> which
is in flash and should (from what I've read) be excruciatingly slow anyway.

~~~
alinajaf
If you swear at that chat bot enough times with enough profanity it forwards
you to a google search for 'cleaning supplies'.

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quux
Now blend the cloud!!!!

~~~
simonsarris
Wouldn't that just be blending things from a datacenter?

Lest we let it slip our mind, the cloud is a still a group of real places, its
just data/processing not near your location.

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metatronscube
What a waste! especially since I have little to no chance of getting picked to
try one out :( Oh well.

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gvsyn
Only question with the blending, have they ever tried blending another blender
(same model etc)?

~~~
riledhel
OOOhhh blender recursion!!

~~~
acangiano
It's blenders all the way down.

------
guyzero
Does this video series actually sell any blenders?

~~~
natrius
No one would've ever heard of Blendtec without them. I'm sure they've sold
more than enough to recover the couple thousand dollars they've spent on the
videos.

------
albemuth
I couldn't apply for one of these (though I really wanted one) because I'm not
on the US, good to see them put to good use.

------
icco
I'm still waiting for the iFixit teardown. Maybe Google will send them one?

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wildmXranat
Do NOT breathe that in.

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Apocryphon
That's no Chromebook! That's a black MacBook running Chrome!

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code_duck
Well, that was a stupid waste. At least I can take solace in the knowledge
that this man is inhaling a significant quantity of toxins.

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phlux
While funny etc. We have so much waste in the world as it is - the last thing
we need is the toxic waste of a perfectly good machine being blended and
thrown out.

I have never had respect for the 'will it blend' concept, regardless of how
funny one may find it. It is simply wasteful.

~~~
huntero
It's advertising. Admittedly, I don't have the numbers to back it up, but I
would imagine that the economic impact of this advertising is worth more than
the cost for Google to send a CR-48 to be blended.

~~~
phlux
>...economic impact of this advertising is worth more than the cost for Google
to send a CR-48 to be blended.

I know what it is called - but it is still clearly waste.

I was not referring to the economic impact but rather the environmental.

Sure, we can all say "who cares" -- I do, which is why I ask.

Have you seen the garbage problems we have? The toxic waste dumps that are
china and other places.

I am not trying to be some tree hugging hippy here - I just dont see the
need/value of such advertising.

If they want to advertise - why not go give the things to even more people who
want/need it?

How about give one to every student in a school of their choice?

This is utter stupidity on the part of the advertising industry and proves how
little value they provide society other than more and more thought pollution
on top of the actual pollution they produce.

~~~
barrkel
You do not have nearly enough information to make this determination. If
tablets like this reduce the demand for bigger laptops and desktops, making
them more popular through various forms of marketing may in fact _reduce_
overall environmental impact.

~~~
jonhendry
"Various forms of marketing" - of the nearly infinite range of marketing
approaches, "wasteful destruction" is only one, and oddly enough, most
successful marketing campaigns never stooped to that level.

And even when damaging the product is the approach taken, it's not usually a
pointless stunt. When Timex abused their watches in commercials, the point was
to show that the watches would keep working.

The blending thing is just stupid web-meme fan service, that is unlikely to
make a notable contribution to selling Cr48s. Or blenders, for that matter.

------
bigwally
a youtube link

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5IHNeyHjtM>

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jrockway
I actually wanted to test my application on a Cr-48, but I didn't get one.

Oh well. I keep forgetting that it's Microsoft that says "developers,
developers, developers, developers".

~~~
apetresc
You're joking, right? The fact that you weren't one of the thousands to
receive a free laptop makes Google developer-unfriendly?

~~~
jrockway
Yes, my post was intended to be tongue-in-cheek. The article is about putting
the laptop in a blender; comments should be read with that in mind.

~~~
Natsu
Well, at least you're not alone in having no luck.

------
signal
What was that Google mantra again?

Evil has many shades of grey but wasting a computer that could literally
educate an entire schoolhouse in Africa and keeping this old, stupid joke
going must be somewhere south of good.

~~~
sliverstorm
Who's to say this old, stupid joke of a publicity stunt won't sell them enough
cr-48's to give TWO cr-48's to schoolhouses in Africa instead of the one they
started with? That's what business _is_ , the classic best answer to "you have
one egg. How do you make two?"

~~~
signal
My point is that there are more positive ways to make two than by destroying
one. If Google is just interested in getting publicity for the cr-48 they
might as well join Cheerios on Days of Our Lives.

