Google Struggles To Give Away $10 Million 145
theodp writes "On Google's 10th Birthday in 2008, the search giant promised $10 million to the best five ideas for using technology to improve the world, through Project 10^100. CNN reports that while Google's intentions were good, of course, the company's follow-through leaves much to be desired. Google announced the cash prize contest in September 2008 and closed public voting on 16 finalists chosen from over 150,000 ideas in October 2009. Over eight months later, the company has yet to announce the winners. 'While genocide and other pressing problems relentlessly advance,' remarked contest finalist Daniel Meyerowitz to Wired.com, 'it would seem that Project 10^100 does not.'"
Re:Priorities? (Score:4, Informative)
why not ditch the unimportant and stalled competition in favour of putting the money into the pressing problems?
The problem isn't that they've given out the money to the wrong people, it's that they haven't given it out at all, and they've stopped answering questions or discussing it. It's like Google has completely forgotten about the project.
Serious lack of forethought (Score:5, Informative)
I looked at the contest and at the time I was considering entering there was just too much of a lack of information. I found it insane that a company that huge running a "contest" with large sums of money involved had a rules/regs sheet that looked like "Dave in shipping" had typed it up. I had several good ideas (vetted by industry professionals) that I finally didn't enter because the "For additional questions send mail here" people never responded to any of my mails asking basic rule/regulation questions (most of the information a serious "inventor" would need was lacking in the 1 page rules sheet they offered. They may have updated by now but I got a bad vibe from this at the start. If you can't even set up the contest right, the followthrough is suspect from the start.
They had no information at all concerning simple questions such as:
"Winnings":
How are the prize winnings distributed (are they administered by google or payed out as services or cash or ? (it never said)
Intellectual property:
Is this (they typical)internet VC front where they dole out some prize and in exchange you get all rights to IP and any revenues/future development etc that come from it? The HP "Design our next computer" contest comes to mind. They outsourced years of R&D time to tens of thousands of people on the internet and gave away 1 laptop to 1 person for the privilege of working for them.
I mean,..at least the Tribecca film "Pitch a movie" contest has the decency to tell you in the rules and regulations that by "winning" you're signing your life away to them.
Re:16 finalists? (Score:5, Informative)
Create a single world bank or supra-national currency, uniform rules and transparent public accounting
Wait, isn't that already in [wikipedia.org] the [imf.org] works [independent.co.uk]? Well, probably not the transparent public accounting, but global currency is definitely on the mind of our global rulers.
Re:Priorities? (Score:3, Informative)
Which really shouldn't surprise anyone. Google has, as far as I can tell, a short attention span and a tendency to easily be distracted by shiny things.
Just the FAQs ma'am (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't exactly a "prize". No one who submitted any of the ideas is the intended recipient of any of this money. Google's corporate board (re:advisory committee) will decide what to do with the money, and its going to places where the ideas can be implemented.
Just a couple of notes from the FAQ:
How many ideas are you funding?
We have committed $10 million to fund up to five ideas selected by our advisory board.
How will Google implement these ideas?
Once we've announced up to five ideas for funding, we'll begin the process of identifying the organization(s) that are in the best position to help implement the selected ideas.
How involved will Google be in the implementation of the ideas?
We didn't focus on ideas that Google would implement alone; instead, we looked for ideas whose implementation will required another organization's expertise or resources. These organizations will be the recipients of the funding grants.
Re:Maybe... (Score:4, Informative)
Asked and answered - from the FAQ:
Q: Why did this take so long (original deadline was mid-January)?
A: When we put out our initial call for ideas, we didn't expect so many, over 150,000! Reviewing each idea -- and we really did review each and every idea -- took a long time, and also forced us to revisit how this project would work. Ultimately, we recognized that many of the ideas we'd received were similar and could be strengthened by being combined with other ideas. The result is the top 16 finalist ideas. We know this took a long time and is organized a little differently from what we originally envisioned, but we hope that the solutions we ultimately arrived at will allow the greatest number of our interested users to have a real impact.
TED.com (Score:2, Informative)
Like this one http://www.ted.com/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html [ted.com] for example, real lasting results with practical amount of money.
Re:16 finalists? (Score:5, Informative)
Create a minefield-clearing machine that works by simply "rolling" across landmine-suspected areas and detonating mines.
It [wikipedia.org] exists. [wikipedia.org]