Different cultures have their own ways of inculcating valued skills and establishing a hierarchy (usually based on the same skills). The best way to help a person gain skills, especially a young person, is through experience, and if you can make it a fun experience all the better. It's amazing how much we learn when we're at play.
Dogs establish hierarchy in a pretty straightforward way; they sniff at each other's hind quarters to establish the alpha-dog.
Among humans the hierarchy thing is more subtle and potentially more disingenuous. . When the hierarchy is based on observed performance, like who gets to the top of the hill first in the Tour de France or who digs the most coal in a shift, then it's pretty clear who the leader is.
But when the skill is used in private or remote locations, and when the work is virtual rather than physical, it's hard for the group to discern excellence and then the process sometime morphs into a verbal contest for hierarchy. You could call it bragging. The geek world calls it alpha-geek butt sniffing.Inevitably, the verbal postures give way to demonstrated performance and the hierarchy shifts, but there's time latency between posture and performance. We need a quantified, distributed, platform-independent method of establishing Geek Ninja status.
It may be that Google has met the need with A Google A Day, in which Google offers you a question and you need to use your Google Ninja skills to find the answer. And if you've brought your A-Game, you can use the timer to measure how long it takes you to get the right answer, for Tweeting and general chest-thumping.It's pretty cool.
Schools really aren't teaching search skills other than "don't use wikipedia". That works about as well as, don't think of elephants. But if we're in an information economy, and the valued skill is handling information overload, then maybe Google has rolled out a game of great value.
Google's incentive program is a homage to 
(TAOCP). Knuth used to pay a finder’s fee of $2.56 for any typographical errors or mistakes discovered in his books, because “256 pennies is one hexadecimal dollar”, and he paid $0.32 for “valuable suggestions”. Given his near-mythic status in geek circles, these checks were valued way above their monetary value; computer scientists with both a PhD and a Knuth check hanging on the wall would sooner take down the PhD. Knuth was 
The whispered challenge to Apple's iPhone is Google's ... well, GooglePhone. Although several manufacturers are now selling smart phones running Google's Android operating system, the new Nexus (named in homage to Blade Runner's 
What I find most surprising is the identify of the players. At the consumer product level, nobody's talking 
I wanted to test drive this, so I Googled the title of a favorite song from my youth: 2525. The song is really titled 
According to Washington State University neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp, the act of Searching stimulates the lateral hypothalamus with the neurotransmitter dopamine. The dopamine circuits "promote states of eagerness and directed purpose," Panksepp writes. It feels so good that we seek out activities, or substances, that keep this system aroused— cocaine and amphetamines are particularly effective at stirring it. Apparently, so is Google.
Unfortunately, with our laptops and multi-tabbed browsers, our Seeking may not be inhibited and we may continue in an endless loop of Searching. All our devices — e-mail, Facebook, texts, Twitters — are feeding our Dopamine appetite and destroying the Search/Find symmetry. We hear "you've got mail" and we salivate like Pavlov's dog. No wonder we call it a "CrackBerry".
If you'd like to see the "new" Google search algorithms in beta-mode, go to 
Once books and education became widespread, experience wasn't the only teacher, and Geezers weren't the only resource. Some people invested in education, and we called them professionals. Others invested in an apprenticeship, and we called them tradesmen. Both the professionals and the tradesmen practiced, gained experience, and became masters of their craft. 
This was probably the next phase in information storage and access. First was Geezers. Next, we had Gurus - doctors, plumbers, lawyers, carpenters, teachers, preachers - each making a living by trading on their niche expertise. These new Gurus knocked the Geezers down a notch, and delivered a higher level of expertise. If you couldn't find a Guru, you'd still rely on a Geezer. 
There was once a radio comedy series that satirized Gurus called, "Ask Doctor Science". You'd write in your question, and Dr. Science would give you an answer. The show's tagline was:
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