> When you become an expert, you'll get exclusive program perks, like special badges in the Google Help Communities, direct access to Google employees to provide product feedback and a chance to test Google products before they're released.
So, the reward for helping with the forum are some badges and a chance to be Google's beta tester, and it appears to be working? Maybe they can launch some sort of mechanical turks service in the future where the workers are paid with this "rewards" instead of money.
Sounds like a great opportunity for Box and Dropbox to provided helpful forum answers about alternatives to Google Drive. Knowing Google they are probably training bots on these forum answers so the Google bots themselves might start recommending competitor products.
So, the reward for helping with the forum are some badges and a chance to be Google's beta tester, and it appears to be working? Maybe they can launch some sort of mechanical turks service in the future where the workers are paid with this "rewards" instead of money.