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Google Puts the Brakes On Saving the World

Posted by kdawson on from the taking-a-little-longer dept.

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.'"

4 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Google loves spam by shanen · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Funny /. should mention Google's increasingly anti-social behavior. My primary interaction these days has been to complain about the spammers they support, such as the example below. For those of you who don't read Japanese, it will probably suffice to note that the content includes the expression for "big boobs". Google's support in this particular case is the fake opt-out at the bottom. If you think the yakuza who sent this spam will honor their opt-out requests, please post your email address here, and I'll get back to you with a wonderful offer.

    When I started complaining too publicly about the spam support by Google, they first killed the Gmail address, and then banned me completely from their Groups.

    Google fighting evil? Gee, I always thought censorship and spammers were evil, but if Google loves censorship and spam, then I must have been mistaken, right?

    (And /. has lameness filters, too, so at least their censorship is mindlessly evil. Is that a better flavor of evil? I wound up having to delete all of the evidence of Google's support of evil. /. at it's typical worst.)

    X-Apparently-To: via 202.93.86.18; Tue, 05 May 2009 22:32:06 +0900
    X-YahooFilteredBulk: 203.155.246.205
    X-Originating-IP: [203.155.246.205]
    Return-Path:
    Received-SPF: softfail (PC11: domain of transitioning na-ka-ke-n.zzzxxxccc?9o@ezweb.ne.jp does not designate 203.155.246.205 as permitted sender) receiver=PC11; client-ip=203.155.246.205; envelope-from=na-ka-ke-n.zzzxxxccc?9o@ezweb.ne.jp;
    Authentication-Results: mta322.mail.ogk.yahoo.co.jp from=; domainkeys=neutral (no sig)
    Received: from 203.155.246.205 (HELO PC11) (203.155.246.205)by mta322.mail.ogk.yahoo.co.jp with SMTP; Tue, 05 May 2009 22:32:06 +0900
    Subject:
    Message-ID: 20090505223207
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset="SHIFT_JIS"
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
    MIME-Version: 1.0
    Content-Length: 786

    --
    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
    1. Re:Google loves spam by shanen · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Before the mangling by the /. censorship system, that particular email included a Gmail address for the fake opt-out at the bottom. Wonderless /. was also unable to deal with the content, which was a Japanese advertisement for women with big tits. Technically, it's supposed to be illegal in Japan, but the actual accommodation is apparently to look the other way as long as they're above high school.

      Google has actually done a pretty good job of reducing the spammers' websites that they were hosting directly on places like blogger. Gmail also kills spamming email addresses pretty quickly Those seem to be the only two fronts they are still fighting on. Fake opt-outs are quite common, as well as administrative contacts for spammers or for spammer front men. There are also lots of fake headers pointing to Gmail. I acknowledge it's hard to blame anyone for the Joe jobs, but Google should at least care about their reputation.

      Instead, it is obvious that Google's new motto is "Live and let spam."

      Me? I think every form of support for the spammers should be cut off. Google could do MUCH more to fight the spammers.

      --
      Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
  2. Re:Pay for submission by hwyhobo · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Oh, I can see another politically correct anonymous whore with mod points is running loose on Slashdot.

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    End anonymous moderation and posting on /.
  3. changing the world by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    well my idea is simple, free, sustainable, the only way we can change & save the world....just visit www.sahajayogapune.org & experience your selfrealization. meditate twice, morning & evening & spread the message around after you are benefitted.

    ashok kumar misra, pune, india, mobile: 09881401144