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Google launching Android challenge — surprisingly, Québecers not allowed! (21)

November 12th, 2007 · by Heri · Mobile

I would never blog about Silicon Valley initatives, because there are bloggers who are way more resourceful than I am in this game. However, Google’s Android SDK is interesting from a Québec perspective.

The whole story is that Google is moving into the mobile networking industry with a framework that allows any third-party developers to use a common toolset, accessing for the first time functions like messenging with SMS, touchscreen, video and audio, and even 3D functions. This is great from a developer’s perspective, making cell phones now as attractive as web or desktop software development. Compute into that the growth of mobile phones worldwide, in countries like China, India, Brazil where many of their citizens would only have access to a handset, and you have a whole new market opened for new innovatie applications. To raise the platform’s adoption rate, Google has also announced today a $10millions challenge, where they invite developers to create applications for cell phones, beginning early 2008.

I was thinking this would be great news for our upcoming blitzweekend, but after reading the fine-print, it turns out that residents of Québec cannot participate

While we seek to make the Challenge open worldwide, we cannot open the Challenge to residents of Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, and Myanmar (Burma) because of U.S. laws. In addition, the Challenge is not open to residents of Italy or Quebec because of local restrictions.

I don’t know about you, but it’s weird to see Quebec after Cuba, Iran, Syria … ! Is this because of the scandalous data rates? or maybe because they would have had to make a track in French? Well surely no, we are not there yet. After a little bit of digging and emailing, it’s because in Québec, if you want to launch a competition with a final prize, you have to pay the Québec governement 10% of the prize as a permit to host the competition, even if noone in the province wins. That means Google would have had to pay Quebec $1 million just to allow Quebecers to participate.

Oh well … today, i see this as a sign that there is way too much legistation in Quebec.

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