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Google Puts the Brakes On Saving the World
An anonymous reader sends along a sharp and snarky article that takes Google to task for taking longer than expected to award $10M in its competition to find and fund world-bettering ideas. The submitter comments, "After using its tenth birthday as occasion to solicit philanthropic ideas from Web users through its Project 10^100, Google appears to have backed off from its commitment to provide $10 million in funding to the winner. While the company was supposed to reveal the Project 10^100 winner in February, Google has since delayed the vote once and now suspended it indefinitely, due to the overwhelming response — Google says it received 150,000 entries. A Google spokeswoman wouldn't commit to a new date, saying only it would be delayed 'for a while longer.' She further apologized for the company's 'over optimistic assumptions about how quickly we could analyze all the ideas that we've received.'"
I post "Hey, look, they ARE evil!" because I genuinely believe they are (to the same degree all corporations are).
Google didn't get surprised. They knew what they were getting into. They're not idiots.
Either way, it's fucking trivial to sort through 150,000 entries. Hell, it's not like they're dealing with paper submissions that have to be prepped, scanned, OCR'd and QA'd first.
If they want to go through each submission by hand, 10 unpaid interns and 3 weeks will get you to the top 100. 1 week with the big boys will get you to the top 10.
At this point, Google can post the top 10 ideas, with periodic updates as it's narrowed down, discussed with the submitters, and ultimately decided over the next month.