Ever wanted to develop your own useful and fully functional Google gadget but could not push through with your ideas due to time and financial constraints? Google just answered your dilemma with the launch of Google Gadget Ventures, a pilot program that would distribute grants and seed investments to developers and users of Google Gadget API in developing their own useful gadgets.
Google Gadget Ventures will provide two types of funding namely:
- Grants – A funding money worth $5000 will be given to developers who can create promising gadgets and are included in the Google gadgets directory. These gadgets must have around 250,000 page views weekly in order to qualify for a grant.
- Seed investment – For Google grant recipient wanting to develop a business around the Google gadget platform, a seed money amounting to $100,000 will be awarded.
This initiative could be viewed both in a positive and negative way. From the point of view of Google, its a way of rewarding third party developers who use Google’s Gadget APIs to develop their own useful gadgets and if taken positively would encourage other developers to put their bright ideas into action by way of developing gadgets. But from a negative point of view, the grant Google plans to award to developers who enter their Google Gadget Ventures is minimal to the earning returns that Google will get once those gadgets become available in the Google gadgets network. Just think about the possibilities.
