Am I missing something or are these just regular Kaggle competitions, but with no prizes? What is google offering, other than the branding? Why are competitors motivated to take part?
I think there is a difference between the pro-like competitions with high emphasis on the top competitors where high prizes make sense to attract and reward the best.
At the same time at least Google Code Jam which I participated in, is an event for the masses where while there are winners in the end the focus is on great experience of thousands students and recreationals who participate.
When they started the Google code jams, around 20 years ago, for the initial few years they used TopCoder as the platform. So it may play out that way.
