As promised last week, Google today released the software development kit for its Android operating system for mobile phones. In an effort to give developers a little extra incentive to create applications on top of Android, it is also announcing a $10 million challenge. The best 50 apps will get initial grants of $25,000 each, followed by ten $100,000 and ten $275,000 grants.

That comes to $5 million. The second $5 million will be reserved for another challenge after handsets have been built. Google is obviously serious about jump-starting Android and the Open Handset Alliance as viable mobile operating system. You don’t see Google giving away $10 million to developers creating OpenSocial apps. Which project do you think is a higher priority?