Google launches Android SDK and $10 million contest

Google's Android SDK was launched today -- and along with it is a contest worth $10 million dollars that will be spread around to the winners. I will be taking part as a developer, and I hope that many of my readers will too. The idea of a contest is exactly what Google needed to do in order to get developers excited about the new platform.

The "Android Demo" video (which seems like a really cheesy infomercial) features Sergey Brin and Steve Horowitz talking about and showing off a prototype using some of the basic functionality of Android. Two devices were shown, one with keypad based navigation and another with a touch screen like the iPhone. It appears that the new operating system will require quite a bit of horsepower to take advantage some of the more advanced features.

The Android interface, in my opinion, isn't even close to as advanced as the iPhone, but for the first shot it's pretty darn good. Now we will have to see what kind of applications will be built on the platform using the newly released SDK.

So how does the contest work? Well, the 50 most promising applications will be initially given $25,000 to continue development on March 3rd. After this stage, those 50 applications will be narrowed down to twenty where half are given $100,000 and the other half will receive $275,000. Not too shabby if you ask me -- some of the most interesting applications will likely be simple and not require much time to develop.

If you have any ideas for a mobile application that uses Android, but you don't have any experience making applications, let me know! If I choose yours and it wins, I will gladly share the prize money.