On the lookout for talent, Google said Tuesday that it is holding its first European code jam.

Registration for the competition, in which programmers compete online to solve programming problems, starts Tuesday and ends May 23. A May 23 qualification round will whittle the number of participants to 500. Rounds one and two will reduce the number of competitors to the top 50, who compete in the final round on June 29. Google will send the 50 finalists to Dublin for the weekend for the competition.

All finalists receive cash prizes, with the first winner receiving 2,500 euros (US$3,100). Google will hand out a total of 30,000 euros to the top 50 contestants.

Competitors must be legal residents of Europe, Africa or the Middle East.

Google said the competition is a way to reward programmers and also to recruit them for positions at the company. Google has European engineering centers in Zurich, London, Dublin and Trondheim, Norway.

Rules and details of the competition can be found on the Code Jam Europe website.

Google held its first code jam in 2004 in California. It has also held such competitions in India and China.

The code jam’s location doesn’t appear to have been relevant historically. In 2005, when the final competition was held at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., a Polish university student won the top prize, and students from the Netherlands and Russia came in second and third place, respectively. The previous year, a student from Buenos Aires won the contest.

-Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service

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