I think being able to write a web crawler is a better test for your development skills than opening a $25 developer account. And don't forget that most Android

I think being able to write a web crawler is a better test for your development skills than opening a $25 developer account. And don't forget that most Android developers do not publish their work on their own private accounts. Anyway, the easter eggs were just that: a small game for promotion and fun. There were around 300 of these - the Google+ I/O community alone has 43000 Members (Disclaimer: I got one 3 days after they started the easter eggs). If Google's I/O team is smart they secretly check for peoples public activity through their Google+ account when they select winners in "the lottery". If they favor people who follow Google Developer pages or who liked some of the tech videos on youtube, they would already filter out a lot of the civilists.