Google Gadget Ventures: $5k grant with up to $100k seed funding

http://www.google.com/gadgetventures/

by seiji • 19 years ago

11 16 19 years ago

dawie• 19 years ago

This is really cool. Google is going into Venture funding in their own unique way...

Finally a company that wants to encourage people to build products on their platform. Why didn't MS or Apple do this 15 years ago?

lupin_sansei5• 19 years ago

More ranting! Why on earth must you pay for a copy of Visual Studio? Microsoft should be giving it away free with all copies of Windows. Or at least making it free to download.

palish2• 19 years ago

..It is.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualc/default.aspx

ced2• 19 years ago

"Through their Empower ISV program you can get five complete sets of MSDN Universal (otherwise known as "basically every Microsoft product except Flight Simulator") for about $375. Command line compilers for the .NET languages are included with the free .NET runtime... also free. The C++ compiler is now free. Anything to encourage developers to build for the .NET platform, and holding just short of wiping out companies like Borland."

- Joel (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html)

zach2• 19 years ago

No purchase necessary. Many will play, few will win. Void where prohibited.

But seriously, although this sounds great, nearly all of the Gadgets I see are content, not technology. Are they going to give someone $5,000 to take even cuter pictures of kittens for Cute Kitten of the Day? Or are they trying to go after the market Facebook is courting and get people to make more mini-apps?

tx• 19 years ago

Define "apps". Arent' majority "apps" online are nothing more than HTMLsed SQL queries? (i.e. "content")

zach2• 19 years ago

Good question. I'm kind of wondering what gadgets they have in mind and I guess it's gadgets with a feature set. If you have features, they'll front you some cash to improve or add features.

kmt• 19 years ago

It doesn't say what percent of the business that $100K would take.

Tichy• 19 years ago

On a related note, which "Widget" platform is most popular? I want to create a widget for my content eventually. I guess one should just support them all, but perhaps some make more sense than others? Guessing: OS X users are the most avid widget users?

Google Gadget Ventures: $5k grant with up to $100k seed funding

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