There is a very serious benefit to recognizing a losing hand and folding before you're in too deep. You see a weakness in Google's execution, and I'd agree in some places, but there is some wisdom in closing up failed experiments rather than doubling down as Microsoft has done with several of their investments in the past.
I have zero problem with the fail-fast, fail-earlier strategy and attitude. ultimately it's business. there is no point to continue if it's obviously not going to work. there is a catch though: do fail because of innovation (crazy, big ideas). I'd argue all these experiments, except gmail/map/wave, have 0 substance. most of them are crappy implemented, poor planed cat projects.
The benefits of driver-less vehicles in terms of accidents and fatalities aside, consider for a moment just how under utilized the current transportation capacity is in this country. On average, even at peak drive times, what percentage of vehicles are actually being used? Just look down your street or at any parking lot you pass on your way into the office.
In order to get the convenience of not having to call a taxi which could then require a long wait every time we need to go somewhere, we take out loans for tens of thousands of dollars to own a vehicle that is all ours. We then pay to maintain the multi-ton machine, build custom paths and storage buildings on our homes just to store them, and everywhere we go large swatches of land are set aside just to give us temporary storage for our vehicles since we can't reasonably visit any location without this machine in tow.
In a reality where we must own a vehicle in order to move around quickly and easily, all of these things make perfect sense and are just a part of our lives so much so that we don't even think about them most of the time. This one "little" change can completely transform it all.
Even if Google never moves to acquire Uber, though, they may simply look at it as Uber creating the social acceptance and market demand for this type of service. That would then make Google entering into the market with a competing service later an easier and a more predictably profitable venture.
"Gear", in this case, meaning the medium the photos are stored on. The headline (and image in the post) try to make it sound like thousands of dollars of camera equipment is on the line here, when really we're talking about SD cards. It's a modern equivalent of saying that if you violate the contract, you have to give us the film and/or negatives.
I doubt the "authorized agents" would distinguish a camera from its SD card. I can't imagine that said agents would be anyone other than hired private security.
This is probably a "cover you ass" clause in case there's an altercation between security and the photographer. It's easy to imagine a low paid security guy resorting to saying "I told you you can't take pictures here" and smashing the camera.
How is this different from the phone based 2-factor that Google once had for their own products? Honest question, not being sarcastic here.
Google used to have an authentication system that would display a QR code on the screen which you would use your phone to navigate to. That URL would then, assuming your phone was already authenticated to Google, log you in on the computer as well. I was trying to remember the name of the system, but can't come up with it.
The short version is that Google determined the system to be too insecure and vulnerable to exploit and canceled the system.
