Rumor: Project 10^100 news within a month

Yesterday morning, Tom Krazit of CNET announced that Google will release a Project 10^100 update "within a month". According to Krazit, Jamie Wood, a Google spokesman, said "We received over 150,000 ideas from users which far surpassed our expectations. We've never managed a project like this and it's taken much more time than we imagined to judge and sort through the ideas."

Krazit also noted that Google's 11th anniversary is within that timeframe. According to Wikipedia, Google was incorporated September 4, 1998. I think September 4 is the earliest date we could hear the announcement.

A Googler's take on the Project 10^100 delay

I asked the opinion of the Google Blogoscoped forum about Project 10^100 Now and participated in an interesting discussion. It appears that most people are satisfied with Mayer's "this fall" comment and the current schedule for Project 10^100.

However, I also received some good news from the Google employee JohnMu. Apparently, Google employees from across the company came together to sort entries for Project 10^100. My mental picture of twenty Google.org taking an hour a day to evaluate proposals was completely off the mark.

Progress Report: We need your help!

Project 10¹⁰⁰ Now is in trouble. The website and Twitter campaign have failed to generate enough exposure to elicit a response from Google. The web traffic spiked on the first day to 250 people and dropped precipitously after that. Yesterday, only 20 people visited the site. We need a major boost to reach critical mass.

If this project is going to succeed, you must help. First of all, we need you to ask your favorite tech blogs to write about us. If you look around most tech blogs, you'll find an email address or contact form for submitting tips. If you don't know of any tech blogs, you can pester Engadget, Mashable, Ars Technica, and Google Blogoscoped. We also need you to promote Project 10¹⁰⁰ Now through social media like Digg, Slashdot, and Delicious. You can do that easily with the "share" link at the bottom of the site or in the sidebar of this blog.

Please don't limit yourself to the promotion methods I've mentioned here. If you can think of an off-the-wall campaign or a crazy publicity stunt, we'd be glad to hear it. Of course, the project could also be saved by a polite letter to a local news station or a flyer on a college bulletin board. We need any help you can provide; one person could be the difference between failure and success.

Google announces vague Project 10^100 start date

Although we would have liked to receive an specific start date for Project 10¹⁰⁰, Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products & User Experience at Google, has announced that Google will be making some announcements regarding Project 10¹⁰⁰ this fall. In an interview with Digg yesterday, Mayer said "We'll be making some announcements coming up this fall to close the process, get the public vote going, and ultimately decide on the winning idea or ideas."

Immediately before that, she offered two explanations for the delay: Google had to sort through the "huge response" and Google has to judge the feasibility of the ideas "to make sure that they can actually happen." Before now, I hadn't considered that Google has to gauge the possibility of all 100 ideas before they announce the finalists.

For example, one high-profile idea called ColaLife plans to use Coca-Cola's massive distribution network to distribute live-saving medicine to poor children. Before placing this idea on the finalist list, Google must contact Coca-Cola to see if they will cooperate, estimate the cost of implementing the idea, and gauge the probable effect of the idea. That's a significant task for even one idea, much less 150,000.

However, I'm not ready call this project a success. "This fall" is not an acceptable time frame; Google should announce a specific date. If they misgauge the date, they can delay it again, but until they commit to a date, they have no incentive to prioritize the project. By announcing a deadline, Google will become accountable to the public for any further delays. After 135 days of indefinite delay, Project 10¹⁰⁰ badly needs accountability.

Progress Report: Gaining momentum

Project 10¹⁰⁰ Now has officially launched! We sent out the press releases Tuesday morning, and we're beginning to see a response.

So far, we've had three blog posts written about the project. One was on the popular Spanish-language blog Mangas Verdes, and one was written for the lively tech blog Internet Evolution. I didn't appreciate the Internet Evolution article's total disregard of my secretive partner, but we need all the exposure we can get.

If you'd like to help Project 10¹⁰⁰ Now succeed, you should bring attention to the project any way you can. You should tell you favorite tech blogs to write about the project or contact Google directly about the delay. Every submission counts; we only need one major article to get Google's attention.

Good news and bad news

Today, I have both good news and bad news for our project. The good news is that I've put a lot of work into the official website and I think it's coming along nicely. Take a look! I applied a style similar to the one on this blog and designed a snazzy button for people to spread the word on Twitter. I also put up the Spanish translation of the web page. It was translated by my co-conspirator, he-who-doesn't-want-me-to-reveal-his-name (aka Open Source 10 to the 100.)

The bad news is that we are delaying the project a couple of days. I now plan to send out the emails to the tech press Monday or Tuesday of next week so that they'll write about it on Tuesday or Wednesday. If we contact them now, we might not make it into the blogs before the weekend. Hopefully, by delaying the official launch, we'll compete with fewer stories for the front page. We want to give our project the greatest possible chance of success, so we'll wait until the time is right.

Google Proyecto 10^100 carta abierta

Para Andy Berndt, Director del Proyecto 10¹⁰⁰.

Estoy preocupado acerca del Proyecto 10¹⁰⁰ de Google. En otoño de 2008, anunciasteis el Proyecto 10¹⁰⁰ dentro de la celebración del décimo aniversario de Google. Planeasteis reunir grandes ideas de personas corrientes e impulsar las mejores de estas ideas para beneficio de la humanidad. Junto con muchos otros, os envié mi idea y me dediqué a esperar el anuncio de los 100 finalistas. No me sorprendió el que aplazarais el anuncio de los finalistas hasta el 17 de marzo; después de todo habíais recibido más de 150.000 ideas. Sin embargo, cuando llegó el 17 de marzo y no anunciasteis una nueva fecha, empecé a preocuparme.

La crísis económica estaba todavía intensificándose y la necesidad del Proyecto 10¹⁰⁰ se incrementaba, cuando el proyecto fue aplazado indefinidamente. Esperaba que la nueva fecha fuera anunciada en una o dos semanas, pero mi optimismo era infundado. No habéis dado ninguna noticia acerca del proyecto en más de cien días, mientras que la necesidad del mismo no ha menguado.

Quizás las recientes medidas de restricción de internet tomadas en Irán podrían haber sido paradas por alguna idea anónima de internet, o quizás un plan de energía verde podría crear trabajos para desempleados. El Proyecto 10¹⁰⁰ tiene un gran potencial para ayudar al mundo, pero el potencial solo no puede ayudar a nadie.

El Proyecto 10¹⁰⁰ se ha retrasado demasiado. Es hora de que fijéis una fecha firme para anunciar las ideas finalistas. Transferid gente de otros departamentos, motivad a los empleados a trabajar más, o dejad a un lado los otros proyectos del departamento, pero acabad el Proyecto 10¹⁰⁰. El mundo ha esperado suficiente.