A leading Indian blog reports that Google has discriminated Indian kids by awarding a paltry $2100 for the doodle4 google competition, when kids from USA  “will win a $15,000 college scholarship to be used at the school of their choice, a trip to the Google New York Office, a laptop computer, and a t-shirt printed with their doodle. We’ll also award the winner’s school a $25,000 technology grant towards the establishment/improvement of a computer lab.” A couple of other news sources from India are also reporting the story from the same perspective.

Was a bit surprised and started to poke around if this was true. Not only is this true but also is pretty darn nasty. The prizes announced for the doodle4google competition in Australia, USA, New Zealand, Japan, Ireland, Israel, England were either the same as the US prize or is much higher than the prize announced for Indian Kids. Mexican prizes are worse when compared to the Indian prize. Mexican winner will get a laptop and not a single peso is given to the school or the kid. Egyptian winner gets crayons and pencils. No laptop. No ipod. Chinese kids are better off in the third world with almost $7200 in cash prize. I could not comprehend the logic behind the prize formula. The prizes, in comparison are more peanut shells than the proverbial peanuts.

Unless these third world kids stole Larry or Sergey’s lunch money, they deserve a decent and equal treatment. So much for not being evil Google.

Go Elmo go!

Update: Sorry guys! Due to sleep deprivation, I made a boo-boo. The picture is that of Cookie Monster and not that of Elmo. Thx for pointing out kahkah