I am really happy to see that a company is doing something worth while with corporate sponsorship, These numbers are not huge in the world of big business marketing.

ie: NASCAR owners operate on a very slim margin. Most top tier teams require $25million/year in sponsorship money to make ends meet.

It really makes me want to support a company like Google when they can make the decision to support human kind as a whole. Support science, discovery and the human spirit as opposed to putting shoes on some idiot Jocks feet.

Thank you Google!
-Jack

February 21, 2008, Mountain View, CA – The X PRIZE Foundation and Google, Inc. today announced the first ten teams to register for the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon to win a remarkable $30 million in prizes. This international group of teams will compete to land a privately funded robotic craft on the Moon that is capable of roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending video, images and data back to the Earth.

ABOUT THE GOOGLE LUNAR X PRIZE
The $30 million prize purse is segmented into a $20 million Grand Prize, a $5 million Second Prize and $5 million in bonus prizes. To win the Grand Prize, a team must successfully soft land a privately funded spacecraft on the Moon, rove on the lunar surface for a minimum of 500 meters, and transmit a specific set of video, images and data back to the Earth. The Grand Prize is $20 million until December 31st 2012; thereafter it will drop to $15 million until December 31st 2014 at which point the competition will be terminated unless extended by Google and the X PRIZE Foundation. For more information about the Google Lunar X PRIZE, please visit www.googlelunarxprize.org.

Quoted from: Google Lunar XPrize