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Valleywag
Google has pushed back the deadline for its $10 million Android programming contest to April. The jackpot will go to the developer who comes up with the best application for Google's cell-phone operating system. Google says the reason is that it's made updates to Android, and it wants to let programmers take advantage of them. But doesn't it seem equally likely that Google hadn't gotten enough submissions?
Cell-phone coders can write iPhone-friendly Web apps now, or wait until Android-friendly phones show up at some point in the future. Today, Android apps run on every single one of the exactly zero Googlephones in consumers' hands. Money is always nice. But there's something fame-seeking programmers prize just as much: People using their software.
Comments
Is a contest the most efficient way of doing this? For a developer, why spend months developing something that might not win? You'd think they could find a handful of programmers and just contract them to develop some cool stuff.
And these iphone web apps would only take 2000 years to net 10 million dollars. Even with a nonexistent phone, the google plan has a larger potential payoff
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