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Because people like competing. Because people like solving problems.

There is often beauty in good competition problems. And you can even learn something along the way.

Sure but regular kaggle competitions have all those qualities, usually with a $50K+ prize to boot.

Google seems to have skipped out on the prize and substituted branding

I think there is a difference between the pro-like competitions with high emphasis on the top competitors where high prizes make sense to attract and reward the best.

At the same time at least Google Code Jam which I participated in, is an event for the masses where while there are winners in the end the focus is on great experience of thousands students and recreationals who participate.

When they started the Google code jams, around 20 years ago, for the initial few years they used TopCoder as the platform. So it may play out that way.

line in resume?