Google is offering $10 million in prizes for people who build the best software to enhance the company’s upcoming cell phone operating system.

The Mountain View-based company is developing a free cell phone software package that it says will make it easier to surf the Web over mobile devices. It also will give Google more opportunities to sell ads and services.

The operating system will be based on computer code that can be openly distributed among programmers, which Google hopes will encourage developers to create new software and improvements that could spawn new uses for smart phones.

Winning offerings could encompass simple aesthetic improvements like personalized home screens or more complicated social-networking programs that merge data from the Web — such as maps or personal Web pages — with data from users’ phones — like contact information or the phones’ geographic locations.

As part of the Android Developer Challenge, a panel of judges will pick 50 winners from entries received from January 2 through March 3, 2008. In the first phase of the competition, those winners will each get $25,000 and be eligible for ten awards of $100,000 and another ten $275,000 awards.

[ View ]