Google App Engine Education Awards - FAQs

Q: What can I do with $1,000 in Google App Engine credits?

A: You can distribute the awarded credits to up to 10 applications. You can also apply the credits to services such as paying for the instance hours of running instances to handle your web traffic or your computation work, paying for Datastore read or write operations, paying for bandwidth (in or out), or other billable service on Google App Engine. (The credits may not be used to pay for the monthly fee of a Premier Account.) You can learn more about the billable services on Google App Engine’s Billing and Budgeting Resources page.

Q: What information is needed about my course or school project in the application form?

A: Please include a problem statement, objective, expected outcomes, and how you will share the results.

Q: In which countries are you launching this program?

A: The Google App Engine Education Awards program is offered to applicants in the US. Applicants must be full-time faculty or staff at universities or colleges in the United States.

Q: How does the selection process work?

A: Reviewers are internal educators and software engineers. They evaluate and rank each course or project following the criteria described in the RFP. Selected faculty will be notified by email. Please note that we do not provide individual feedback on proposals that did not get selected. By entering this program, you agree that the decision of Google is final and cannot be challenged for any reason.

Q: If I receive a Google App Engine Education Award, what should I do first?

A: There are a couple of steps:

1. Upon receiving the award, if you don’t have a Google App Engine account you will need to open one. It only takes a couple of minutes and does not require any money. The award recipient will be asked for one or more Google App Engine app ids to transfer the credit to.

2. You also need to sign up for a Google Checkout account, if you don’t have one already. NOTE: If you have more than one Google App Engine app_id and wish to split the credit between them, please specify how to structure the amounts up front. Changes will not be possible once money has been credited to your ids.

Q: How do I generate an app_id?

A: By signing into your Google App Engine account. For normal Google Accounts, including Gmail users, you can log into your Google App Engine account by visiting https://appengine.google.com/

For users with accounts through Google Apps https://appengine.google.com/a/<DOMAIN.COM> Where <DOMAIN.COM> is the domain that your account is associated with.

You will need a valid phone number for SMS validation. If you encounter problems, please submit your SMS validation problem through a form on this page.

Q: What happens if I use less than $1,000 in Google App Engine credits in 12 months?

A: You will lose the unused credit. Unused credit will expire after 12 months.

Q: Can I apply the credits toward other parts of Google's Cloud Platform?

A: Not currently, but we are working on incorporating additional services into the program.

Q: Who owns the intellectual property of the application(s) or content created by me?

A: As between you and Google, you (or your school, as applicable) own the intellectual property rights in the application or content you create. Google owns the intellectual property rights in Google App Engine. Google may independently conduct similar development and will own the intellectual property rights in the application(s) or content Google creates.

Q: Will Google announce the names of the award recipients publicly?

A: Yes, once the selection process is completed, we will likely share the news publicly on the Google Research blog, the Google App Engine Blog and Google in Education site. We would also be happy to publish outcomes and adoptions of Google App Engine for education through the award on these sites.

Q: Where can I learn more about Google App Engine?

A: Information describing the programming environment of Google App Engine can be found on the Google Developers website. Please also see these FAQs for specific questions you may have.

Q: If I receive an award will I be working for Google?

A: No. Accepting the award does not establish an employee or employer relationship. In addition, no agency, partnership, or joint venture with Google will be created as a result of your participation. Q. Am I allowed to publicly discuss the work I’m doing with the award? A: Yes. Although this is an unrestricted gift, we would appreciate receiving attribution or acknowledgement of our gift in applicable publications.

Q: Am I required to report my progress to Google?

A: No, but we would appreciate any reports on your progress.

Q: Can education awards be renewed?

A: Yes. If the awarded credits are used up or the award has come to an end after 12 months, educators can re-apply for one extension for the original project. New projects are not eligible. To re-apply, tell us why you are requesting an extension, define the problem statement, objective, expected outcomes, and how you will share the results. Qualifying projects will receive an additional $1,000 in Google App Engine credits for 12 months of the subsequent calendar year. Renewal decisions will be at the sole discretion of Google and will be based on community interest, number of pageviews (users), and overall project progress and potential impact. All unused credits expire at the end of the twelfth month.

Q: Am I required to share the result of my award project?

A: No. Google’s App Engine Awards program is designed to support education projects whose output will be made available to the public and to the education community. To that end, we ask that you provide us with a few sentences sharing what you intend to do with the output of your project (e.g. open sourcing code, making applications or data sets public, etc.).  Please note that Google App Engine Awards are structured as unrestricted gifts, so there are no legal requirements once the project is selected for an award. This is simply a statement of your current intent.