Google Announces Summer of Code 2008 Projects
An anonymous reader writes "Google announced today it had accepted 1,125 students to work on 175 Free and Open Source Projects this summer. This represents an increase of almost 25% over last year. Nearly 7,100 applications were received. For those who weren't accepted, there is an offer to send Google Swag to any student who completes their project anyway."
Even if every other company is evil, it's still not okay to be evil. "Everyone else does it" is not a valid defense.
...that I hate Google for their immense privacy violations
I'm sorry, but what are you referring to? You don't have to give them any personal information to use their services. Almost anything is opt-in with Google.
Just about the only thing that's opt-out is their advertising and Google Analytics, but you can opt out of that fairly easily, too; Google doesn't try to track people who don't want to get tracked.