[k-mcgrady]

That makes sense. But as this is such an important event for developers I don't think anyone should be given preference - especially based on how much money they have to spend. It's great to give money to charity but it's not something anyone should be given preference for.

[rdl]

I suspect sufficiently "important" people can already get a pass, through backdoor requests to Google. This would at least turn it into a positive externality. (although I suppose in the "google gives a pass to Friends of Google, it gives some benefit to Google to be able to confer special access).