Google Code Jam Latin America

Google Announces Winner of Global Code Jam 2006
Petr Mitrichev of Russia bests field of 21,000 to take home top prize in New York
NEW YORK, NY - Oct. 27, 2006 - Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced that Petr Mitrichev won today’s Global Code Jam competition and was awarded with a $10,000 first prize. Mitrichev topped a field of over 21,000 registered competitors from around the world, a record number for GCJ. Second place went to Ying Wang of the United States. Andrey Stankevich came in third. Second through tenth places carry a cash prize of $5,000.

Additional cash prizes went to the other top 100 finalists, who represented 24 different countries. Each finalist was flown to New York this week to compete in the championship round and see firsthand what is happening in the Google New York office. Last year, Marek Cygan of Poland took home the grand prize.

"We're thrilled to bring together such a talented, diverse group of programmers here in New York to celebrate the best in engineering," said Craig Nevill Manning, engineering director. "Google is passionate about fostering a community of people who want to build the next generation of tools for users around the globe and providing them with the opportunity to meet and discuss challenging problems."

This is the fourth annual Global Code Jam, which is produced in conjunction with TopCoder, the leader in online programming competition, skills assessment and competitive software development. Google’s Global Code Jam is a celebration of the art of computer science and demonstrates the value Google places on excellent coding.

The competition, which began Sept. 5, attracted 21,000 registrants from more than 100 countries. All entrants participated in an initial qualification round, and 1000 of those went on to a two-round competition field. The top 100 scorers from round two of this phase came to Google’s New York offices for the finals. All of the programming for any round could be done in Java, C++, C#, Python or VB.NET.

More information about Google Code Jam 2006 can be found at http://www.google.com/codejam.

Polish Student Takes Google Code Jam Europe Crown
London, July 5th 2006 – Tomasz Czajka from Poland came out on top following last week’s Google Code Jam Europe final in Dublin. He beat 49 other competitors from 15 different countries to take home the coveted title and €2,500 prize money. Finalists from Eastern Europe dominated, with eight of the overall top 10 coming from Poland, Russia and Estonia.

Nearly two thirds of the 50 finalists were from Eastern Europe, with 11 from Poland. All finalists enjoyed an all expenses paid weekend in Dublin and a share in the €30,000 prize money. As well as rewarding Europe’s top computer programmers, Google hopes that the competition will help attract top engineering talent to its growing number of European R&D centers.

“We were delighted to see so many high quality finalists competing in the first ever Code Jam Europe. It was a very intense and exciting final, Tomasz did extremely well to keep his cool and finish top of a very talented field," says Knut Magne Risvik, Norway Engineering Site Director.

After three grueling rounds, cracking some of the toughest computer coding challenges along the way, nearly 10,000 entrants were reduced to just 50.The Dublin final saw competitors devising their own algorithms, winning points if their code proved to be unbreakable and losing points if someone else managed to crack it.

Belarus (1)	Bulgaria (1)	Croatia (1)	Denmark (1)
Estonia (1)	Germany (6)	Latvia(1)	Netherlands (4)
Norway (1)	Poland (11)	Russian Federation (10)	Slovakia (4)
South Africa (1)	Sweden (4)	Ukraine (1)	United Kingdom (2)

Code Jamming in Dublin
On June 29th, Google Dublin hosted the onsite finals for Code Jam Europe 2006. This is the third of four code competitions slated for this year, with China in January, India in April and a Global Code Jam this fall.

After nearly 10,000 registrants and three intense online rounds, the top 50 finalists persevered and flew to Dublin for the final challenge. ACM members also joined the coding community fun, traveling from countries as far afield as Kazakhstan, Russia, Sweden, Egypt, Spain, France, Poland and Bulgaria to celebrate the success of the finalists. Several of the ACMers had qualified for the Code Jam Finals in their own right, and having them in Dublin added a real buzz to the proceedings.

Over 15 countries were represented in the finals, and 31 of the top 50 are from Eastern Europe. We celebrate the success of the top finishers: Tomasz Czajka from Poland took home the €2500 grand prize; second- and third-prize winners were Petr Mitricheve and Roman Elizarov, both from Russia, who won €1000 each.

Watch the fun that defined Code Jam Europe in this short clip from the 3-day event - and keep on coding to prepare for the next one!