Google: Oh that $10 Mill
By Bala Shah

Google dominates the search market, and with such market dominance, a few Googlers think that ordinary rules do not apply to them.  On July 7, 2010, Techgoss had reported on how while Google was banning every other website from ‘Cloaking’, it was itself indulging in this unethical practice.  Google is quite particular that no website in the world indulges in ‘Cloaking’ where your site presents one face to the Google Crawler to get a higher ranking and another image to humans who visit the site. Cloaking results in an immediate ban from Google.

Now comes news that Google has not followed up on its promise to give away $10 Million it promised in 2008.  CNN is reporting

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On its tenth anniversary in 2008, Google promised $10 million to the best five ideas for using technology to improve the world, through Project 10x100 -- a neat play on words (10 to the 100th power expresses the number "googol," which is a one followed by one hundred zeroes).

Google's intentions were good, of course -- $10 million spent the right way could have a real impact on these problems, which range from building better banking tools to a real-time, user-reported news service.

However, the company's follow-through leaves much to be desired. Google announced this cash prize contest in September 2008 and closed public voting on 16 finalists chosen from over 150,000 ideas in October 2009. Over eight months later, the company has yet to announce the winners.
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One would like to believe that there are only a handful of Googlers who are responsible for such potentially embarrassing situations.

While Google has improved our lives in a million ways, this is another salutary lesson that no individual or internet company should be allowed so much control over the World Wide Web that they have one set of rules for themselves and another for the general public.