50 Top Programmers Compete Head to Head in Championship Finals at Google Headquarters
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Oct. 15, 2004 – Google Inc. today announced Sergio Sancho, a computer science student at the University of Buenos Aires won the Google Code Jam, Google’s annual computer programming competition, which comes with a $10,000 first prize. Sancho competed against a total of 7,500 top programmers from around the world for first place. A second place prize of $7,000 went to Po-Ru Loh, a mathematics student at Caltech. Third prize of $5,000 was awarded to Reid Barton, a math major at MIT, and fourth place and $3,000 went to Tomasz Czajka, who is studying for a doctorate in computer science at Purdue University. Additional cash prizes went to the other top 50 finalists, who are working or studying in the United States and in 16 other countries, from Scandinavia to central Europe to Hong Kong, Korea, Australia and New Zealand. Google flew all finalists to its Mountain View, Calif. headquarters this week to compete in the championship round. In 2003, Jimmy Mardell of Stockholm, Sweden, took home the grand prize.
This is the second year of the Google Code Jam, which is produced in conjunction with TopCoder, the leader in online programming competition, skills assessment and competitive software development. The Google Code Jam is a celebration of the art of computer science, and signals to programmers everywhere the value Google places on excellent coding.
The competition, which began began Sept. 1, attracted 7,500 participants from more than 100 countries. All entrants participated in an initial qualification round, and 500 of those went on to a two-round competition field. The top 50 scorers from round two of this phase came to Google for the finals. All of the programming for any round could be done in Java, C++, C# or VB.NET.
More information about Google Code Jam 2004 can be found at www.google.com/codejam.
About Google Inc.
Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program, which is the largest and fastest growing in the industry, provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.
