Details on Android’s $10 Million Bounty For Your Homebrew Apps

You might have heard, Google’s offering $10 million in total prizes for savvy programmers willing and able to make kickass apps for the Android platform. Why so much when other dev communities are getting into the groove for free? A Google rep told me, “We wanted to provide a big enough pool to reward and recognise as many developers who do interesting things as we could.” How’s that for appreciation? Here’s a summary of the Android Developer Challenge.

•Programs, built by using Android’s SDK, can be submitted January 2nd through March 3rd 2008.

•The top 50 programs earn $25K to continue development.

•Those in the top 50 are entered into a final round where ten $275k prizes and ten $100k prizes will be awarded.

•A second round of the contest starts in the second half of the year, when handsets running Android launch.

•”We believe that developers will be drawn to, and flourish in, the open and collaborative environment offered by the Android platform. The Android Developer Challenge is designed simply to catalyze that reaction.”

Pay people decent money to do decent work. Who would have thought of that? [Android]