Google's Goal: Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal

Google ^ | 2007-11-27 | Google

[old-ager]

Google's Goal: Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal

Creates renewable energy R&D group and supports breakthrough technologies

Mountain View, Calif. (November 27, 2007) – Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced a new strategic initiative to develop electricity from renewable energy sources that will be cheaper than electricity produced from coal. The newly created initiative, known as RE"We have gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive facilities by building efficient data centers," said Larry Page, Google Co-founder and President of Products. "We want to apply the same creativity and innovation to the challenge of generating renewable electricity at globally significant scale, and produce it cheaper than from coal."

[rhombus]

“Technically” incorrect title...rules.

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

Let’s hope they can do it.

[JacksonCalhoun]

Nothing beats oil and coal and nucular, but if they can do it, all the more “power” to them. I’d be more impressed with that than the latest software gadget.

[Izzy Dunne]

The newly created initiative, known as RE"We have gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive facilities by building efficient data centers,"

They really should work on that name...

[ikka]

Google probably uses a gigawatt themselves, so if they can figure out a way to drop the price of a fixed cost for themselves they will get their money out of it.

Remember that they have a number of large datacenters which can use huge amounts of power, and are building more.

In my own case, my two racks at the datacenter I have space in, uses more power over a month, than 5 townhouses do. Now consider that Google has thousands of racks worth of equipment....

[bert]

Why?

They have too much money floating around and like AOL before them, are screwing up badly by poking money down a rat hole.

[zaxtres]

“jumping the shark” refers to the Happy Days episode in which Fonzie jumps sharks to bolster ratings for its sit-com. IMO Google is spreading itself thin. It will be another Lucent or other corporate conglomerate in a few years in which it will have to sell off a part of itself to keep afloat.

[rawhide]

You changed the title of the press release/article. That is a no-no.

[old-ager]

Sorry about that. Been here quite a while and didn’t know that rule ... I think it makes my point though ... hoping to take a mulligan on this one.

[humblegunner]

The real title of the article is:

Google's Goal: Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal

I wonder how that got mixed up.

[rhombus]

Yes, I got the reference. The point is that this isn’t the real title to the story. If we don’t post the real titles then searches to see what’s been posted before do us no good. I believe that is the intent of the FreeRepublic rule.

This is how it should have been done: Google’s Goal: Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal (Google Jumps the Shark).

[mad_as_he$$]

Everybody needs a hobby.

[Moonman62]

AOL treated their customers horribly. Money wasn’t their downfall.

[Lead Moderator]

To prevent duplication, please do not alter the title. Thank you.

[cowtowney]

http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=330

[cowtowney]

http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/05/technology/fastforward_fortune/index.htm?source=yahoo_quote

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

Uh . . cause if they succeed in creating renewable energy even cheaper than coal than we no longer need to worry about importing fuel from the ME and we will have skipped a century of fossil fuel use. Coal is dirty stuff and no matter what you think about CO2, SOX and NOX destroy trees and other things. Not to mention the not-so-pretty effects of some mining techniques. Not sure why you would question the value of a fantastic innovation that would be good for all of humanity. My guess is that you are Luddite or a coal executive.

[SkyDancer]

Somebody help me out here - isn’t “renewable energy” an oxymoron? I mean once you convert energy from one form to another you loose energy to provide energy, like it took energy to make gasoline that provides energy to drive a car but once that energy is used, how is it recovered?

(too early in the morning for proper thinking, sorry)

[MikeGranby]

There a nasty whiff of arrogance to this. Google announce that they’re going to do what no-one else has been able to do because they are richer, smarter and less ‘evil’ than everyone else on the planet. Coming next, a cure for the common cold. If only it were that easy...