Andrew Benton

Recently, the latest news out of the Google sphere was talk of a partnership with Gilbarco Veeder-Root to provide Google Maps functionality at the pumps of select gas stations around the country. There has been much fanfare and admiration for this endeavor, including many jokes that “men finally won’t get lost”, or that they will “no longer need to be girly-men to ask for directions”. With all the jokes aside, I don’t think this idea will go very far, at least in its current form. While the idea seems new and innovative, I think it’s ultimately one reserved better for an in-store approach rather than an at-the-pump option.

Delays
Driving is a huge part of American culture, it’s one of our icons of society. Pumping gas is just a necessary evil that we just have to deal with. Today, more than ever, we hate going to the gas station, mainly because the price of gasoline has sky-rocketed. I know it has made my trips to the gas station less enjoyable, and I believe many people would agree with me. Putting touch screen, internet-enabled, advertisement serving, direction giving devices in front of millions of drivers, is a recipe for failure I believe.

Waiting for someone to pump their gas is already an annoyance, with slow pumps and people who refuse to use debit cards. Add to that someone who thinks it would be cool to just see the directions to his house he’s been to five-hundred times this week, or trying to zoom in on Area51, and you can see where I’m going with this. We already have enough people in this world who care little about other peoples time or respect (yes, I’m talking to you Bluetooth-in-public-wearers who scream their conversations to everyone and hold up the fast-food line), to give them one more thing to play around with while the rest of us try to get on with our days, won’t end well. People already have a problem using simple electronic displays to enter their pump number and print a receipt, and we want to put a Google-enabled mapping device in front of them now too?

I am also worried about the option to print the directions to your destination. First of all, can you imagine waiting to get a gas station attendant to replace the paper roll on one of these? If anything, this technology should just rely on the fact that anyone who is capable of logically using this system *probably* has a txt-enabled phone. Why not blast it to their cell phone?

Vandalism
Another thing to consider is that most gas stations are not open 24-hours, and that means they have to close down for periods of time. If these are embedded in the gas-pumps, how do you protect from vandalism? I think you’ll see a large number of vandalisms of these devices (breaking, smashing, possibly cracking the firmware and putting other sites on). This is yet another reason I believe this idea is much more suited for in-store, where the device can be protected and monitored.

Fraud
I cannot find a report of whether or not these will have Google ads embedded with the system, but if they do, I can see a case for click-fraud with these devices. Also, one could easily leave their businesses address and information up on the screen for the next user to see, free advertising I guess you could say. This could be remedied by a simple reset when a new customer activates the pump I guess, but I haven’t heard any hard details on how the system would work.

This system could also be abused in a few ways. First, think about when you were in high school, and someone was throwing a party, what did all the invitations have on them? Yep, directions. You could easily stand at the pump and print out directions to your house 50 times, hey an easy way to save money yourself I guess!

So How Would I Change It?
If I had any say in how this would be rolled out, I would do it like this:

• Put the device INSIDE the store, to better protect, manage, and secure the devices from delays, vandalism, and fraud. If they want to use the device they don’t have to hold up a gas pump to do so. Also, putting it in a store with employees cuts down on potential vandalism and fraud.
• Make the ads on the device local. I haven’t been able to confirm whether this will have regular Google ads, or nothing at all, but since this is Google we’re talking about, they probably will have some form of advertising. Google should sell ad on a location-basis, add an interface on the device to allow gas stations to do this. This is another way for more targeted advertisement. Because honestly, a gas station in a bad part of town has little chance of persuading one of its customers to buy a Maybach from the dealership across town.

So, with all that said, I think that this will be very hyped, and short lived. I think with the decrease in the price of in-car GPS systems, this was an idea about 5 years too late.

Tags: gas pumps, Google, google gas, google maps, google news, google opinion, Opinion