Google App Engine Research Awards - FAQs

Q: What do I get for $60,000 in App Engine credits a year and what can I do with it?

A: The $60,000 in App Engine credits can be used for any service on App Engine. This includes 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 for any other billable service on App Engine. (The Credits may not be used to pay for the monthly fee of a Premier Account, however.) You can learn more about the billable services on App Engine’s Billing and Budgeting Resources page.

Q: What happens if I use less than $60,000 in App Engine credits in 12 months?

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

Q: How does the selection process work?

A: The review panel is made up of internal researchers who are experts in their field. Reviewers evaluate and rank each proposal. Each recommended proposal is reviewed following the criteria described in the RFP. Final decisions are reviewed once more by research executives before we send out awards to the selected faculty. Please note that we do not provide individual feedback on proposals that did not get selected.

Q: If I receive an App Engine Research Award, what should I do first?

A: Please follow these steps:

1. Upon receiving the award, if you don’t have an 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 App Engine app_ids to transfer the credits 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 App Engine app_id and wish to split the credits 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 App Engine account. For normal Google Accounts, including Gmail users, you can log into your 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: Who owns the intellectual property generated by the research?

A: You (or your university) will own the intellectual property generated by your research. Google may be independently pursuing the same or similar research questions and will own the IP generated by its own research.

Q: What is your data policy?

A: Google’s App Engine Awards program is designed to support work whose output will be made available to the public and to the research 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 data sets public, etc.). Please note that 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 intentions.

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

A: Yes, once the selection process is completed, we will share the news publicly on the Google Research blog. We would also be happy to publish results of the research performed through the award on this site.

Q: Where can I learn more about App Engine?

A: Information describing the programming environment of Google App Engine can be found on the Google Code 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: Accepting the award does not in any way establish a relationship of employee and employer, agency or partnership between the researcher and Google.

Q. Am I allowed to publicly discuss the work I’m doing with the award?

A: Yes. However, 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 on my progress to Google?

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

Q: Can research awards be renewed?

A: Yes, after one year, up to five projects may qualify for one award extension for an additional $60,000 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.

Q: Why does this program not allow submissions from universities worldwide?

A: We decided to run this pilot in a limited number of locales in its first year. We are looking forward to inviting proposals from countries around the world in the future.

Q: Do you have any tips on how to write a good proposal?

A: Yes, here are key points to keep in mind:

1. Provide a clear statement of the proposed work, including, objectives, expected impact and outcome.
2. Outline the general plan of work and activities you will undertake.
3. Tell us about an approach you have already identified to address the problem.
4. Tell us how you plan to disseminate project results to increase scientific understanding.
5. Describe potential benefits of the proposed project to society at large.