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.'"

Comments

Pay for submission

[Twinbee]

Make each entry cost $5-10 or whatever to enter. That would encourage only the cream to surface, whilst also giving Google incentive to actually finish the project.

Low expectations...

[Itninja]

This phenomenon recently happened at work. We are a non-profit attached to the State education system. We have less than 125 employees, but most of us get paid okay (for a non-profit) and have great benefits (because of the government association). However, it's not exactly Google or Microsoft; certainly not the sexiest place to work. Usually it takes weeks to get enough resumes when a new job is posted. But the HR folks did not account for rabid nature of current job seekers. They posted a new job opening on Craigslist and within three days had 15000 applicants. They eventually had to pull the opening while they waded through all the resumes...

It was really quite crippling for them.

Re:Low expectations...

[Rorschach1]

I posted a Craigslist job listing (in an area with no Craigslist region of its own and relatively little local usage of the adjoining regions) for a 10-15 hour per week packing and shipping job at a buck an hour over minimum wage and had 75 resumes in 3 days, with most of those applicants willing to commute 15 miles or more for 2-3 hours of work a day!

As it turned out, just having 75 applicants doesn't mean it's easy to find someone who will actually show up on time, follow simple directions, and actually remember when I tell them three times in the same week that UPS next-day air packages always go in the express envelopes if they'll fit.

I think next time I try, I'm going to add some simple qualifying test, like "tell me what the USPS first class international rate is for an 8-ounce package going to the Czech Republic." That way I can just throw out all of the cut-and-paste responses that didn't even read the whole listing. I will most certainly include a note that when I say to email or fax and not call or visit, that means that a call or visit will automatically take you OUT of the running for the job.

So yeah, really really bad signal to noise ratio, even without $10M on the line.

Re:Hype

[Red Flayer]

I'm glad to see you've revised your plan to include gliders.

Have you addressed the acceleration problems mentioned in this post by Gnick the last time your idea was discussed?

That'd have to be a mighty long and soft slingshot band.

Arent they google?

[moniker127]

Why don't they use their data sorting skills to organize all the ideas in a wiki or some such and have them meta moderated to find out what the most popular is?

May be a criminal offense

[Animats]

To advertise a "skill contest" and not pay off on the scheduled date is usually a violation of the Deceptive Mail Prevention and Enforcement Act. Not good, Google.

Is this the year of GoogleGroinkick?

[miffo.swe]

Google goes out of their way of doing something nice and "people" kick them in the groin repetedly. The people feels a lot like astroturfers trying to portrait Google in a bad manner. I suspect its very irritating for some unnamed companies with goodwill down in the slimepit that a successful company like Google can be liked by their users.

It would be nice of the editors would stop posting crap articles like this whos only purpouse is badmouthing, straight from the competition. Its a different kind of FUD but still the same of the old and tried.

The more i read things like this the more i feel for Google. They really need to start buying politicians and astroturfers if this keeps up just as their competition already does.

Work hours to get it sorted

[Anonymous Coward]

Fun fact: If it took an average of 20 minutes to review each entry, it would take 50000 hours for a single person to go through all of them. That's 6250 days, or a little over 17 years.