Google hosts programming code-off

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-831164.html

By John Borland 
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
February 6, 2002, 5:10 PM PT

Step right up, programmers and hex-slingers: Google's got $10,000 for
the most creative coder among you.

The geeks'-choice search engine is sponsoring its "First Annual Google
Programming Contest," offering $10,000 to the person or team that can
come up with the best software program for compressing, organizing,
linking or otherwise manipulating a mass of raw search data.

In return, Google gets to keep the idea--forever. The company won't
pay any royalties, although the winner can sell it to anyone else who
wants it.

On a Web site notice announcing the contest, Google says it's doing it
for fun, "in celebration of more than three years of delivering the
best search experience on the Internet." Any wildly profitable ideas
that come out of it would just be a fringe benefit.

"We wanted to give people, especially students, a chance to do fun
stuff themselves," said Uls Hoelze, a "Google Fellow" who is helping
lead the project. "We want to encourage people to be creative."

Online contests have been a mixed bag in the past, occasionally
stirring up trouble.

Most notoriously, the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) offered
$10,000 to hackers who could break the security technology it was
planning to add to digital music files. When a group of Princeton
researchers promptly did so, SDMI threatened to take them to court if
they actually told anybody how to do it, setting off another string of
legal wrangling.

Google's contest is more of an old-fashioned code-off, however. The
company is providing anybody interested with the raw search data
representing about 900,000 Web pages and a basic program for
interpreting that information.

What's next is up to the creative minds of the programming masses. The
company suggests a few ideas, such as better ways to compress the data
for storage purposes, to organize it or to identify links. Presumably
a creative coder could instead figure out how to translate the pages
automatically into Dutch or make an animated Lion King sing the
appropriate URLs.

"Part of your job is to convince us of why your program is
interesting," the company writes. "Other than that, you're free to
implement whatever strikes your fancy."

The winning entry may be added to Google's portfolio of Web
applications, but there's no guarantee. Teams interested in the prize
can enter as many times as they want, and all entries are due by April
30.



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