Giving Away $10,000,000? Google Proves It’s Tough

Two years ago, Google celebrated its tenth anniversary by launching a competition to give away $10 million to the top five submissions that demonstrated using technology to better humanity. It was cutely called Project 10 to the 100th (you know: a googol).

Last year, the company selected 16 finalists out of more than 150,000 entries. Then, the world voted to create a top five. And in October 2009, the polls were closed and the votes were tallied.

Chirp… chirp… cue tumbleweed.

Despite the whole process of bringing in a swack of submissions, creating a fanfare for the project, and ostensibly celebrating Google’s tenth birthday, the search giant is oddly quiet. It’s like the project has just… stopped.

To look into things, the folks at Wired sent emails to the project’s address; and then those emails promptly bounced back. Google’s 2009-dated website for the project vaguely states that “we’ll announce the winning big ideas in the near future”.

For contestants who spent a lot of time and effort preparing submissions, the lack of news over the past nine months must be disheartening.

Has Google spent over a half a year figuring out the logistics of distributing the $10 million prize to the five winners? Possibly.

There could be a multitude of legal issues getting in the way, or Google might not have accounted for the cash outflow decided upon two years go. Whatever the reason, Google has yet to say anything on this topic.

It seems giving out $10 million is tougher than you’d expect.

[Wired]