What's the Deal with Google's Delayed Competitions?

Two competitions of the number one search engine have been delayed without any acknowledgement of the reasons explaining the hold-up. Does it have something to do with the brain drain that Google currently faces and attempts to take measures for preventing it or is there a problem with the \"department of ideas\"? One of the recent major problems that affected millions of Google users worldwide was the crash of Google\'s service. During the same period the company\'s major competitions started fading away. It might be that the Internet giant spends a lot of time taking over the world instead of managing its projects and keeping its promise.

It is worth mentioning that the two major contests had the goal of exploring the wisdom of users around the globe. By mixing the ideas of the crowd with its advanced technology, Google wanted to develop something totally new, but it seems that things went the wrong path and got lost.

First

The first project was dubbed Project 10 to the 100th, which was created to motivate people to provide ideas that, according to the company\'s blog, would have the power to \"change the world by helping as many people as possible.\" This competition was set back in September 2008. It also aimed to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Google. According to the rules of the competition, the semifinalists of the project should have been announced at the end of January 2009. Initially the company\'s idea was to engage the public and make the project as popular as possible. Afterwards the goal was to narrow the number of the semifinalists down to a maximum of 5 and in the end give away $10 million to the most creative and productive ideas. At first someone might think that $10 million would go to one winner, but the truth is that the money would have been distributed among the finalists.

The official website of the project says that Google staff continues examining over 150,000 entries that users from five continents have sent. Taneem Talukdar, a systems design engineer, mentioned that the contest is overdue and that \"There\'s been some grumbling.\"

Second

The difference between the previous competition and the second one (that is to be described below) lies in the level of ambition, with the second project being somewhat less go-getting. It was named the Android Developer Challenge. The competition engages participants to send their application for the open-source mobile platform Android, developed by Google. In summer and spring of 2008 the Mountain View company hosted a similar contest. Google awarded the 20 winners of the competition with $5 million in prizes. During the same time period Google announced that it was looking forward to set up another contest, the winners of which would be granted another $5 million. The starting point of the competition was expected to be somewhere \"after the second half of 2008\". But up till now Google hesitated to launch the competition, which discouraged a number of developers.

After all of the above mentioned, Google says it knows of the discontent. On its blog, Google\'s workers wrote about the problems linked with the delay of the competitions. The company\'s spokespeople stated that the two contests that started last year were on hold. According to Jamie Yood, one of Google\'s spokespeople, the Internet giant had \"over-optimistic assumptions\" regarding its Project 10 to the 100th. \"We\'ve never managed a project like this and it\'s taken more time than we ever imagined possible,\" said Yood in an e-mail. Still the company did not give any details explaining the reason for the delay of the Android developer competition.

Possible Reasons

A lot of suppositions have been posted online by users. Some of them consider that the reason lies in the fact that Google is short of funding, others believe that staffing has something to do with the problem. A number of users assume that the delay is linked with legal issues regarding the necessity to translate entries from a variety of languages (since the competition was international). There was even strong criticism about the delays. \"Something so [sic] important as saving the world should not be done in a rush,\" wrote in a comment one of the users frustrated with the problems around Google\'s contests. Some believe that Project 10 to the 100th is nothing but a marketing trick. There\'s even a presumption that the work is taken over by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.