Ten to the One Hundredth

Phil Shapiro has issued a dire warning that Google's Project 10 to the 100th will fail. He may be right that the project is doomed, but not for the grave reason of brevity. World changing ideas don't require more than 300 words. This isn't a call for papers on how to build a Large Hadron Collider -- this is a call for clever ideas that make people's lives better. The best startups and the best ideas are the ones that need no explanation; in hindsight they are obvious.

Of course, a philanthropic project such as this can't really fail per se. Someone will get the 10 million to work on their idea. But you can measure the quality of the success by the return on investment for that 10 million. What we're likely to see is a somewhat interesting but hardly world changing (or perhaps even novel) idea that gets the money and a lot of fanfare but doesn't end up producing much. That will be the measure of the success of this project. And really, are there people sitting on these incredible ideas, just waiting for a Google X-Prize? I guess that's what they aim to answer.

So calm down Phil, it's not that bad. Google's project is just a way to draw attention to their charity programs, and in that it will succeed. If there is one thing Google knows, it's advertising. And don't knock brevity! Hopefully they do get some good submissions, but as the Demotivator says: "None of us is as dumb as all of us."