Friday, September 26, 2008

Google: $10M to Implement Good Ideas

Google will award $10M for ideas that benefit the world - neXt PRIZE (future X PRIZE blog) - The content is from CNN Technology:

Got an idea that could change the world, or at least help a lot of people? Google wants to hear from you -- and it will pay as much as $10 million to make your idea a reality.

To help celebrate its 10th birthday, the ambitious Internet giant is launching an initiative to solicit, and bankroll, fresh ideas that it believes could have broad and beneficial impact on people's lives.

Called Project 10^100 (pronounced "10 to the 100th"), Google's initiative will seek input from the public and a panel of judges in choosing up to five winning ideas, to be announced in February.

Google announced the project live on CNN on Wednesday morning. ...

People are encouraged to submit their ideas, in any of 25 languages, at www.project10tothe100.com through October 20. ...

A Google spokeswoman was reluctant to set parameters for the submissions, although the project's Web site suggests that successful ideas should address such issues as providing food and shelter, building communities, improving health, granting more access to education, sustaining the global ecosystem and promoting clean energy.

To be clear, the $10M is for implementing the winning ideas, not for the people that submit the ideas (unless, I suppose, they're the ones that would implement them).

Will contests ever get old? Not if Google’s in charge - Venture Beat: It’s interesting that Google has chosen yet another contest to plow its philanthropy efforts into. Google, you may recall, was also the sponsor of the Lunar X Prize, and also ran Android Developers Challenge for its mobile platform, children’s drawing competition Doodle 4 Google, the Google Programming Contest and Desktop Gadget Contest, and others.