Project 10^100
project10tothe100.com
project10tothe100.com
If, as everyone opines on here constantly, ideas have little to no value, but rather it is the execution of those ideas, why not submit ideas that may have some validity, and let Google essentially play matchmaker and help find the organization, people, and talent to execute on that idea?
If someone is going to spend 10 Million anyway, why not use the chance and think about all the things that you wish were fixed or improved.
Unless you are Superman I doubt it you can fix everything in the world yourself.
1) Let various non-profits like the Red Cross or the Susan Komen Foundation etc. register as 'Recipients' with Google's AdSense program
2) Let website publishers who are (perennially) stuck with sub $100 earnings nominate one of these organizations to receive their AdSense balance- whether it is $0.25 or $99.
Bingo! All that money that Google is sitting on gets put to work immediately for worthy causes. Even if Google pays these orgs only when the total exceeds $100, this would help a ton of people around the world.
I'll just do it myself...
We don't need more altruism or nobless-oblige. We need more innovation. Google, who all but started the cloud computing model, is a leader in innovation. They should stick with what they are good at, technological innovation, and not have some kind of save the world guilt trip. The world benefits most by a Google that is focused on the one thing they are great at: search and a cloud computing dev environment.
Don't save us, google. Just keep up the good work. That way, by benefiting from your technology, we can save ourselves. :-)
And, are we not left clinging like shipwrecked sailors to those companies who successfully guarded their shareholder value?
Government is broke and always has been. It spends what it takes. A government rescue is a private rescue at second hand.
Where do you see the orgy of self-sacrificing? And how is this presumed orgy making the world "perish"?
This is just nonsense.
This has got to be the least coherent analysis I've read on HN in a while. Google is an organization, yes, but one composed of people, and those people are affected by the decisions of invididuals or groups who could incrementally change the world for better or for worse.
You don't think the engineers writing JS to improve that "cloud computing model" (let's use Google Docs as an example) wouldn't benefit either directly or indirectly from some of the ideas that will come out of this project?
How are innovation and this project mutually exclusive? Google is (and has been via Google.org) trying to spearhead innovation outside of its known core competencies (i.e. search, ads, and apps) and does this project not contribute to that?
Seriously though, many hackers have loved Ayn Rand's ideas, but the simple biological fact is that we get gratification from helping people and we feel, to some extent, the pain of people whose suffering we see. Our evolved nature is hacked to make us not perfectly selfish.
[1] See http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2006/03/02/altruism060302.htm... or http://www.justfuckinggoogleit.com
I didn't claim otherwise. we are adaptation executers, not gene survival maximizers. this is why it is so important to keep in mind how changes in our environment can have unintended consequences. witness the dual rise of food processed heavily with sugar and degenerative diseases such as diabetes.
Anyone would be dumb not to see that Google through this project is trying to milk people for ideas for nothing in return.
We all want to help that is true (well besides the psychopaths and that's like 2% of the population) but if someone else is profiting from my help, the way Google most probably would, is just hurtfully cheating.