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.'"
Maybe... (Score:4, Funny)
They can't find the winners?
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Funny)
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They've sent hundreds of cars around the world taking pictures in all directions every 12 feet or so.
And they STILL can't find em?
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Funny)
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Nah they just licensed Diebold's tech, which resulted in negative fractions, so they instead took 10 million from some unsuspecting Floridian.
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New? Microsoft has labeled their betas as release versions for ages.
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.
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So Google puts up a contest offering $10M USD and didn't think they'll get everyone and their dog submitting entries? C'mon!
dZ.
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not Good Enough (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Not Good Enough (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't buy that for a second, I think google's problem is underestimating the $ required to actually _do anything_ suggested by the 150,000+ people that makes those things they suggested worthwhile.
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No, he's saying that out of the 16 final ideas, all them already have governments and charitable organizations dedicating years and hundreds of millions of dollars trying to do the same thing. $10 mil won't do shit to remove the worlds landmines or improve education quality in Africa.
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$10 mil won't do shit to remove the worlds landmines or improve education quality in Africa.
If you spend the $10 million to create a foundation then perhaps it will do "shit". I can think of several ways to spend the $10M on developing existing technology used in plastic toys to do land mine removal. (Then again, I can think of lots of ways to use toy tech to kill people too.)
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Sheesh, don't you people know how Google works by now? Obviously the contest is still in beta. The winners will be announced once the project has gone to full release.
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16 finalists? (Score:2)
Where are the 16 finalists listed at? I don't see them mentioned anywhere on the google site for this.
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So, contrary to the headline, Google isn't struggling to give away the $10 million. They're just struggling with the decision of who the recipients will be.
Re:16 finalists? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nevermind, I found them, under "Ideas". No wonder Google hasn't given out any money, the ideas are really terrible.
"Create a single world bank or supra-national currency, uniform rules and transparent public accounting"
Oh yeah, that's a great fucking idea.
Re:16 finalists? (Score:5, Informative)
Create a single world bank or supra-national currency, uniform rules and transparent public accounting
Wait, isn't that already in [wikipedia.org] the [imf.org] works [independent.co.uk]? Well, probably not the transparent public accounting, but global currency is definitely on the mind of our global rulers.
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Let's make a better world! (for me) (Score:1, Insightful)
* Encourage positive media depictions of engineers and scientists
* Enhance science and engineering education
* Make educational content available online for free
* Drive innovation in public transport
and.... *rolls 1d12*
My cousin asked me what I was studying in school, I decided to be vague in my response: "Engineering"
Her response?
"You're going to work on cars!?!"
Our theory on the thought process is... Hear: "Engine#@$@#$" Think: "Cars have engines!"
I don't think she's technically related by blood, so I don'
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All of the ideas are vague and at le
Re:16 finalists? (Score:4, Funny)
I wish I'd entered now. My "Free HD porn for everyone" idea would've been in with a chance of first place after all :(
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Re:16 finalists? (Score:4, Insightful)
No kidding. These are some of the WORST ideas I've ever seen, for a couple for reasons.
Kudos to google if they keep their money and pay nothing out for any of these. The money will be put to much better use if google uses it to develop more products and services instead.
Side Note: As a freedom loving individual who believes in limited government and free markets, I'd actually rather see the money burned than used for most of these ideas... "Work towards social conscious tax policies"? I might puke...
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]
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Yeah, and they already have simulators installed for these on, like, every computer!
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I can never find the link I want but an even more graceful solution exists in the form of a spider-robot the ends of whose legs are constructed of bamboo. It walks, it plants legs hard, mines go off, bamboo is destroyed, then replaced. Bamboo grows all too fast in many situations so this is a very plausible design. It's also pretty light, so cheap to ship.
It seems to me like some kind of portable ground-penetrating RADAR would be a nice thing to combine with same... Maybe on taller 'bots whose purpose isn't
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All I read when I saw that was "Let self-important blogosphere blowhards blow harder without having to worry about a source of income." Just what the world needs, more bloggers circle jerking...
Priorities? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the guy gets it right with the priorities in his quote by making a poor comparison:
Given that most of the major "pressing problems" (like genocide) can't easily be resolved with technology and need simple discussion and agreement, why not ditch the unimportant and stalled competition in favour of putting the money into the pressing problems?
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.
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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.
Re:Priorities? (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft responded by announcing the imminent release of an enterprise-grade PurityPoint Ethnicity rights management server, complete with robust AD integration, and a bookburning management console snap-in to allow administrators to easily purge documents from SharePoint, or delegate purging rights to their most depraved henchmen. Unfortunately, their truth_and_reconcilation_ml, an ostensibly open-standard XML-based atrocity documentation markup language turned out to be a ghastly quasi-proprietary mess, rammed through ECMA...
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That's not only one of the funnier things I've read on Slashdot, it has a significant ring of truth. :)
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Were they to enter this particular market, Google really would crow about how their breakthrough "machete-reduce" algorithm allows large genocide tasks to be broken down and distributed across thousands of low-cost commodity actors. And Microsoft actually would respond with something a
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I think you've hit the real problem pretty closely... There's nobody steering the ship. I mean, Google has their infamous "army of PhD's" - but above the "company" level (in that army), there seems to be nobody in charge. Nobody making decisions and making them stick a
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Of course, Meyerowitz's allegedly-winning idea was to use technology to map genocide events in real time and use the info to "provide early warning" of new genocide locations, assist relief organizations, etc. That's worth putting money into and would be, essentially, "putting money into the pressing problem" as you said.
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Isn't that "do what international aid is supposed to do"?
Also, if you can map genocide in real time then a) why not put in more effort and intervene? b) how do you get hold of the data that quickly? and c) (slightly flippantly) if the answer to b) is people on the scene then your genocidal group aren't doing that good a job anyway.
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I assumed it would be a crowdsourcing approach like Ushahidi [ushahidi.com], where the public sends in reports of violence via mobile phone, usually simple text messaging. Initially developed for the post-election violence in Kenya, Wikipedia notes [wikipedia.org] that it has also been used "to track anti-immigrant violence in South Africa... violence in eastern Congo... pharmacy stockouts in several East African countries... monitor elections in Mexico and India... [and by Al Jazeera] to collect eyewitness reports during the 2008-2009 G
Re:Priorities? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, Meyerowitz's allegedly-winning idea was to use technology to map genocide events in real time and use the info to "provide early warning" of new genocide locations, assist relief organizations, etc. That's worth putting money into and would be, essentially, "putting money into the pressing problem" as you said.
Except that it's a pretty lousy idea.
I mean... Sure, genocide is bad and all... And stopping or at least reducing it would be good... But how the hell do you think technology is going to assist here?
Who is going to report the genocide events? Are we going to design a new gun or something that phones home when used for genocide? And what's the genocide threshold? And who's going to maintain the hardware? And what's the penalty for not using one of the new anti-genocide rifles when you commit your atrocities? And then what's going to happen once we've got this data mapped in realtime? We're just going to look at the maps and say wow, that's a lot of genocide? Is somebody supposed to act on that data? Or is it just supposed to provide awareness?
It seems to me that you can already create custom overlays in things like Google Earth and Google Maps. Seems to me that there are plenty of ways to distribute information. Seems to me that we don't really need $10 million worth of new technology. What we need is willingness to act on all the atrocities that we are currently aware of.
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The "hey, let's draw some pretty pictures of what is already happening" concept is largely vacuous; but there is actually reasonably good reason to suspect that genocides should be substantial
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there is actually reasonably good reason to suspect that genocides should be substantially predictable
Genocide is performed by people. If we killed all of the people, there would be no genocides.
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Laugh all you want, but that $10 million would do more good for the world in my hands than where it is now...
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But would the real-time visualization really help? Most human problems seem to come from need, or the fear of need. This group is taking what is mine so we must stop them or this group has what I need so we must kill them and get it because our need is so great.
Remove the need and or the need and you will stop a lot of the problems.
You have other causes like racial hate but I doubt that money will fix that.
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I'm going to quote a post of my own:
I assumed it would be a crowdsourcing approach like Ushahidi [ushahidi.com], where the public sends in reports of violence via mobile phone, usually simple text messaging. Initially developed for the post-election violence in Kenya, Wikipedia notes [wikipedia.org] that it has also been used "to track anti-immigrant violence in South Africa... violence in eastern Congo... pharmacy stockouts in several East African countries... monitor elections in Mexico and India... [and by Al Jazeera] to collect eyew
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I mean... Sure, genocide is bad and all... And stopping or at least reducing it would be good... But how the hell do you think technology is going to assist here?
These days everyone and their dog in the western world has a mobile phone with a camera function...and as an inevitable result pretty much every incident of police/military crossing the line(or being perceived as doing so) makes it straight from the phone to youtube where everyone can see it.
So think about it...how do we empower people in those par
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We each make contributions based on what we are best at. There are always going to be people who are better at going out to various places and working with impoverished people directly, or standing in front of tanks, or getting pictures of people in front of tanks. That shouldn't preclude us from turning our attention to various issues in the industry that we are in.
I find it amusing when some people appear to have the idea that the Internet will cure poverty if can only just get everyone on it. Having s
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can't easily be resolved with technology and need simple discussion and agreement
See, now here's where Adobe Connect really shines!
Err, Microsoft Office Communicator with Whiteboard?
Pidgin?
Can't say I didn't try...
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Given that most of the major "pressing problems" (like genocide) can't easily be resolved with technology and need simple discussion and agreement
I have bad news. Simple discussion and agreement doesn't work, either. :-(
What might work is about five billion straitjackets, padded rooms and vast amounts of lithium.
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I wonder just how much 10 million dollars can do to stop genocide? Is that a problem that money can fix? Honestly folks yes I know all the joke answers like move them but some of the questions I wonder if money can fix.
My vote would be for the Polywell reactor.
If that can be made to work then many other problems would be solved very quickly. Fresh water, carbon levels, food production, transportation... All solved for a good long while.
Of course it will cut the revenue to the middle east and really do a jo
Give them time... (Score:5, Funny)
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:Serious lack of forethought (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with this view is the 10^100 project can not be compared to the standard marketing-based lottery system where a company gives out some large amount of cash in exchange for lots of even-larger revenue.
"Competing" in 10^100 wasn't about making money by presenting a good idea, cashing out on IP as suggested. Corny as it may sound it was about making the world a better place. You don't get the money just because you proposed the idea, but you could get funded if you had the capacity to follow through on the idea.
And that's exactly the difficulty I would assume Google ran into. It would a piece of cake to just hand $10M to the Red Cross to help out in Africa. But Google's vision goes beyond this. They were thinking bigger, like coming up with something like the RC and unleashing it as a force of good on the world. That's a hard problem which Google is not built for. It's generally the role of governments and people who have nothing else to do. I doubt Google hired someone specifically to run this project, and maybe that's where the idea fails.
I'm really glad this is getting publicity because I want Google to go forward with this project. It's a great idea, but unfortunately many people are unable to appreciate the difficulty involved so they'll just complain about Big Bad Google again. It's a damn shame Google hasn't done more to help the world, but to criticize them for only starting? What harm will have Google done by not following through? People gotta remember that most companies don't even care enough to try.
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>> It's a damn shame Google hasn't done more to help the world, but to criticize them for only starting? What harm will have Google done by not following through? People gotta remember that most companies don't even care enough to try.
Google is not being criticize for "only starting" to help the world, but for setting this so-called contest for what appears now to be largely a PR stunt, and then brushing it off. In that light, what Google did is perhaps worse than other companies not caring enough.
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We don't know that 10^100 was strictly done for PR, or even that it was a major component of the decision. Given what we know it was just as likely the altruistic mistake as I mentioned. The "appearance" you mention is your own personal opinion. CNN's story is just as biased, focusing solely on the poor guy who feels entitled to win.
For some perspective on what bad PR really is...
PR is Toyota spending millions on TV ads about how safe their cars are during the weeks leading up to the discovery of yet ano
here's an idea (Score:1, Interesting)
Solution to everything (Score:2, Funny)
I have a fix for this along with:
genocide
hunger
crime
pollution
war
greed
stupidity
and almost everything else.
I call it the Dr. Strangelove solution, however I don't think the money will do any good afterwords. Don't worry the cockroaches will survive.
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I have a slightly better one. I'll give you more details, but first I'd like you to invest in my new company, Soylent. We're coming out with a brand new product, it's so hip and modern that we're calling it just "Green".
-dZ.
Significance (Score:3, Insightful)
'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.'
Huh? The maggots growing in the disgusting bucket behind my garage are advancing through larval stage. What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Is this guy complaining? Noting? Does he mean "if so-and-so can progress toward the annihilation of a people, why can't Google just pick an entry?" Does he mean that the holdup is making the world a worse place? Does he think mass murder and delaying a contest are comparable?
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I think his point was that the new ideas this contest was supposed to encourage are the things that will combat those kinds of problems.
Beta (Score:2, Redundant)
whers waldo... (Score:1)
Maybe they have a tough time finding the winners because all the entries are so lame, they would feel beneath themselves to actually award a winner....??? If you have 1000 morons hand in their projects , do you still award a winner even if that would go below your normal standard of what average contest level should be??? Remember this is the same company that had billboards everywhere of an engineering problem where you had to answer the question in order to even get an interview...
Interest! (Score:2)
Imagine the interest on $10million!
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.
Already notified of winning (Score:1, Funny)
Regret (Score:1)
The 'who' is the issue. (Score:2)
Who is Google supposed to give the money to? They had multiple people submit similar ideas. And what's to stop people from pocketing it, rather than use it to implement the idea?
Sounds like Google realized that they'd just be handing people a big ole check with no accountability for it.
Or was Google planning on implementing the ideas themselves?
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Existing organizations capable of implementing the ideas selected by Google (which were inspired by the submissions, not necessarily the submissions themselves), which organizations will be identified by Google's board of directors (if any of the submitters end up getting the money, its because they happen to submitting ideas on behalf of organization that could implement them, and got lucky that Google actually picked their organization to do so.)
How misleading can you get... (Score:2)
...with an article title of "Google Struggles To Give Away $10 Million"? This would imply that Google is just itching to give away the money, but simply can't find anybody willing to bite on their offer.
Maybe a better title might be "Google Reconsiders Offer To Give Away $10 Million".
The pro-Google bias here is just astounding.
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Actually, when I first read the headline, I interpreted it as meaning that Google is scraping pennies in order to collect enough money to pay the prize. I don't see how "struggles to" can be interpreted in any positive way for Google.
-dZ.
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.
On things advancing (Score:5, Funny)
'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.'
Wow. I love that quote. While it may be true and relevant, at face value, it's perfectly smug and smartass. I've gotta remember to use quotes like that in day-to-day life...
"While genocide and other pressing problems relentlessly advance, it would seem that my order at Taco Bob's does not."
"While the plans and schemes of terrorist organizations relentlessly advance, it would seem that this line at the DMV does not."
"While the oil spill in the gulf relentlessly advances, it would seem that, due in large part to the ladies nearby, my love life does not."
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I am particularly amused at how suddenly Google *OWES* everyone the money. Just reading some of the hilariously *offended* sounding comments here, it's like Google not giving them money has destroyed their lives. Fucking hilarious, the sense of entitlement.
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Uh, when a company gets huge volumes of good press off a promise to do something, involving tens of thousands of people in that process, then yeah, they have an obligation to actually do the one thing that required their input: pick winners and give out the money.
That "sense of entitlement" we feel is because we, the public, are in fact completely fucking entitled to expect Google to finish the job.
Re:On things advancing (Score:5, Funny)
While the rating of your comment is relentlessly advancing, it would seem that your karma does not.
"grants" (Score:2)
Yeah, this whole thing was pretty useless except as advertisement for Google.
If the guys starting Google had relied on one of these grants, would they have received any money in time to make use of it?
There are plenty of companies, agencies and non-profits out there who manage to give out similar grants yearly. This isn't *that* hard to do.
Science is not Automatic (Score:3, Interesting)
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Nothing indicates that they are busy vetting anything: emails bouncing does not indicate that they are moving slowly because they are committed to the process.
BestWicklessCandles (Score:1)
1% inspiration 99% perspiration (Score:2)
Time published a long "To Do" list from one of Edison's journals - things like finding a solution for the problem of the long distance telephone call decades before the invention of the vacuum tube.
An invention of that sort has a real and immediate impact.
It is commercially viable - and on paper at least - a realistic and obtainable goal for a late 19th century industrial lab.
Here's a parody ... (Score:2)
Hungarian news portal made a parody video (in English) about the contest:
watch [youtube.com]
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Hungarian news portal Index.hu made a parody video
FTFM
My Idea (Score:2)
Patents (Score:2)
What's really taken them so long is registering patents for all the good ideas. In a world where information and ideas are money Google has effectively gotten 150,000 people to come to them and hand over all their "e-value" without any form of return. Ten of them will get finanaced, look for Google to have heavy contractual ties to those companies and eventually a majority share in the ones that are expected to "monetise".
Re:Problem? (Score:4, Funny)
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"While Bill and other lab rats complete the maze quickly, Ted does not."
Yes, Ted is a rat in that sentence. If that's not what you meant, you phrased it improperly.
One would quite easily and naturally imply that Ted is a lab rat.
No, one would infer. Is English your first language? I mean, if it's not, that's cool, and I'd be willing to give you a break and all. But you suck at it if it's your first.
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Dude, mistaking 'imply' for 'infer' is not the same as sucking at English.
Nor does it help back your claim that you're good at it. And beginning a sentence with a conjunction is common usage outside of English majors; it does not mean I suck more.
Your first post did not indicate you understood the meaning of the phrase. You also ended a sentence in a preposition. I stand by my comment.
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How does this contest benefit Google shareholders? You know them, right? They're the folks that actually own the company?
If done right, 'improving the world' is excellent, unbeatable PR.
Besides the time for THAT choice was prior to launching the contest. Offering to do it and not following through has rather the opposite effect.
I believe the term is 'pot committed'. For bonus points, contrast that with 'sunk costs'. Tough choices, indeed.
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