By Sally Watson, 7 February 2002 08:40
NEWS Google is offering $10,000 to the developer who can come up with the best software program for compressing, organising or otherwise playing with a mass of raw search data. The first 'Google Programming Contest' will see the company post about 900,000 web pages in pre-parsed and raw format, together with a 'ripper' program to provide a framework for processing the pre-parsed data. The prize money - along with a VIP visit to the Google HQ in California - will be awarded to the programmer who comes up with the most original suggestion of what to do with the data. In return, the search engine company gets to keep the idea without having to pay royalties although the winner can sell it to anyone else who wants it. On the competition website, Google says it launched the competition for fun, "in celebration of more than three years of delivering the best search experience on the Internet." The winning entry may be added to Google's portfolio of Web applications, but there's no guarantee. Competitors can enter as many times as they want before 30 April 2002.
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