Hoping to attract talented Chinese programmers to Google Inc.’s planned research and development center in Beijing, the company said Monday it will host a programming competition, called the Google China Code Jam. The Google China Code Jam is an offshoot of the company’s annual Google Code Jam competition. The final event of the 2005 competition, held in September, was won by Marek Cygan, a university student from Poland, who won $10,000 in cash. Two other university students, Erik-Jan Krijgsman of the Netherlands and Petr Mitrichev of Russia, each won $5,000 in cash for finishing second and third, respectively. Hiring for Google’s Chinese R&D is being overseen by Kai-Fu Lee, a former Microsoft Corp. executive who is at the center of a hiring dispute between the two companies.
Microsoft contends that Lee’s hiring by Google violates a noncompete clause in his employment contract. However, a U.S. judge ruled in September that Lee could begin working for Google on a limited basis to begin recruiting engineers for Google’s R&D center pending a trial over Microsoft’s claims.
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