Google Puts $10m Bounty on Android Development

Google, as promised, put the Android SDK out in early access - along with a $10 million pot for the best apps written for its open Android mobile platform by third-party developers.

It said the platform would be open and it's going about proving it. It also needs the buzz - and a killer mobile app - for Android to hit a homerun.

The first $5 million will be paid out in $25,000 prizes for the continued development of the 50 most promising entries submitted between January 2 and March 3 2008 to the Android Developer Challenge I.

These 50 entries will then be winnowed down by the end of May to 20 finalists - 10 that get awards worth $275,000 each and another 10 that'll each get $100,000.

There'll also be another contest - Android Developer Challenge II - that starts after the first so-called Google phones become available in the second half of next year.

The judges will come from the members of the Android-backing Open Handset Alliance (IHA) that Google unveiled last week as well, it says, as technology and mobile experts from the industry in general.

Anybody can play this game - except for Google and IHA folk and developers who live in Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, and Myanmar (Burma) - because of US laws - or Italy or Quebec - because of cockamamie local restrictions.

Google says developers will retain intellectual property rights to their applications while granting Google a license to evaluate and test it for purposes of the contest as well as a license to display the application to promote the Android platform.

It suggest possible apps in:

* Social networking * Media consumption, management, editing, or sharing, e.g., photos * Productivity and collaboration such as email, IM, calendar, etc. * Gaming * News and information (weather, traffic, sports, stocks, etc.) * Rethinking of traditional user interfaces * Use of mash-up functionality * Use of location based services * Humanitarian benefits (monitoring and response for diseases, climate change, natural disasters, etc.) * Applications in service of global economic development for the 3 billion people living on less than $2.00 per day

The SDK with its documentation, sample projects, development tools, emulator and libraries is at http://code.google.com/android/download.html.