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Google Struggles To Give Away $10 Million
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.'"
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?
There are 16 ideas. I agree it could be clearer but those might be the finalists.
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.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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.
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...
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Google is a horrible company! Remember the time they offered up $10M to improve the sad lot of humanity and it took them longer than expected to make sure the money was put to best use? They're just like Hitler!
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.