Also, Lloyd @Lloyd_Hightower said he is ready to hear severe criticisms. what is certain is that this is among the worst experiences I’ve had. The judges and organizers seem to have no experience in managing hackathons (I’m not really blaming them, but even Lloyd acknowledges this here in his own words). So, what can be said about the judging if the management of the competition is already like this? (Better?) I hope they don’t judge in the same way they managed this competition… Additionally, I wonder who the judges are exactly: Google advocates, “influencers”, or real technical staff? I don’t know, because Google seems to be overwhelmed by these “influencers” who might not even spend an hour coding in a month (that’s true, just hosting meetings, advocating, etc.). I hope the judges are not of this kind who just can be impressed by an app that translates a dog’s gestures into code and brain waves in music or kids stories…
Believe me, if the winners and the winning apps turn out to be as they describe: really useful, impactful, and “changing the world”, I will be happy, I swear
Thank you, @Lloyd_Hightower for everything and for this message full of honesty and humility. and thanks for all the details you’ve provided. all the best to you and the entire team that collaborated with you. and all the best for the future to all the participants (including myself): really big ideas, big apps: I’ve never seen this degree of innovation concentrated in one place like it is in this contest: I hope this marks the beginning of an era of apps powered by Gemini that are transformative. All the best 
@Abirate Actually, it’s nice to be kind, as I just told Lulu above : nice words, but you’re mistaken if you think they really made great efforts. They just tested a few apps [if really they teseted them], maybe chose them based on the video (or they may have chosen them based on other considerations…): so it’s not really a big deal. The judges seem not to be technical staff, it’s always the case with other Google hackathons (they also don’t understand anything about the issues facing the world, they can only understand kids’ story apps or gesture-dog apps and similar ones). They give this responsibility to Google “influencers”, advocates who don’t even spend an hour coding in a month. So really, they don’t deserve all that credit. and check comments and in the other posts. All the noise here is not surprising at all…
Let’s wait and see the winners, I understand your frustration, we’ve all put work and even money into our projects, as long as the winners deserve their prizes, that’s all that matters in the end, could’ve been any of us, that’s the nature of competitions.
Winners have been published
It is what it is I guess, I am not the judge. Congratulations to the winners nevertheless.
Man, I would say the result is truly unexpected. I skimmed through almost all the submissions to extract some of the elite apps, and I believed I would guess correctly in at least three categories. But none of them made it into the final results. 
BTW: Screenshot from my Gemboard app.
PS: Correction outdraw.ai win creative category. I was right in one category.
Sua analise para mim faz mais sentido, olhei muitos videos também, creio que muitos app passaram despercebidos nessa competição. Posso estar errado mas sua analise para mim está mais coerrente
Please use translator. I’m saying that because I don’t have the energy to copy paste into a translator, the forum doesn’t have it natively, and you are probably just shouting in the void this way.
He’s saying “Your analysis makes more sense to me. I watched a lot of videos too. I think many apps went unnoticed in this competition. I may be wrong, but your analysis makes more sense to me.”
I got three guesses right at least. I was rooting for PenApple and Outdraw AI - they had the most professional looking game videos and looked legitimately interesting. Didn’t expect them to win because scoring was biased towards impact+usability, and I guess some of it is wishful thinking because I was gunning for the creative/game categories.
JAYU was a solid contender from the start. Great video, do check it out if you guys haven’t. Expected it to nab most useful app, but it only got first place.
Congratulations to all winners!!! What a multi month long trip!
Adding my congratulations to the winners! And cheers to Lloyd for reaching the finish line.
Congrats to all winners. JAYU was the straight winner. I knew it. Similarly GazeLink, Prospera, ViddyScribe. All these apps, I voted for. Judges did great work but were these apps developed in 3 months? I think, GazeLink is a kind of research work, and maybe they have been working on it for more than a year or 2—similarly, JAYU or other winning apps. No doubt these are the best. Secondly, the AR app is straightforward. Maybe, they did not find any other good AR app. You just overlay a talking pic. I can do it within a week. OutDraw AI is also very simple, the only thing is that you play with others and AI. However, I do not know if is it a complete app or not as described in Demo. About Trippy, it is good but not the best. There were many trip-planning apps submitted. Maybe, they wanted African people to become happy to include one in the winner list. After all, geopolitics is also important.
Move on mate, the competition is over, and no need to include nationalities in your feedback, it is irrelevant.
I am moving on. I am happy with the results. I was expecting these winners. For the other apps, I missed to vote. They did not show up during the shuffle. @Lloyd_Hightower said he faced criticism and next time things would be much better. I am sure, things will be managed well next time. It is not a very easy job.
@Lloyd_Hightower I will not say congrats because, apart from maybe the winner of the overall app, which might be OK (not really very good but might be acceptable), just as I’ve said, the results of this competition are really a farce. The judges are incompetent and biased (…)
And the question about this app that won the “Most Useful” and “Flutter” awards: is it really the most useful and capable of changing the world? It offers things that already exist…what is this? At this point, you haven’t found a better Flutter app (I’ve seen hundreds of excellent ones in Flutter). It’s clear that you wanted to give it the prizes (if it wasn’t even decided in advance… because it’s not possible: neither the app nor the video are really attractive or useful, they are boring).
The “Impactful App” award, I barely understood what it was about.: The participant didn’t even make the effort to speak in English, which is the language understood by the majority of the world: I couldn’t even be attracted to, understand, or complete the video… what a farce. then Imagine if the participant spoke another “class” of foreign language like Persian, for example, would you have accepted it?..no sense…
As for the “Most Creative” award, what creativity have they seen in that? Really, are they joking? Is it the most creative? I won’t even talk about the nonsense in the technology awards. I can’t believe my eyes… really nonsense… speechless…You said these apps will promote Google Gemini, but people and professionals will really mock Google and Gemini : cc @Logan_Kilpatrick
It seems like software or AI experts were not involved in the decision-making process. For instance, take the Best Overall Winner—if this is truly the best in terms of impact, usefulness, and creativity, so It is better to pass the prize to Open Interface GitHub - AmberSahdev/Open-Interface: Control Any Computer Using LLMs and possibly other forks of that code!
If I were a judge and came across a promising project, I would at least search GitHub to verify its originality. As an AI expert, I find such applications entirely impractical. The system requires taking screenshots of the visible screen, meaning users are forced to sit and watch—hardly an efficient or engaging experience. That’s precisely why OpenAI is exploring LLM-based operating systems, and Apple is updating its libraries to enable seamless background interactions with apps. If you don’t see these kind of applications in the wild, it’s not because no one knows about them—it’s because they are useless.
When I watched the winner’s presentation video, I assumed any expert would recognize these limitations and evaluate accordingly. Unfortunately, this contest turned out to be deeply disappointing.
it “only” got first place haha
but thank you
JAYU was developed in 2 months, from June to August. I spent a lot of time daydreaming about what I wanted to do with it and how to best achieve it, but didn’t write a single line of code for it until halfway through the competition timeline