Observations of a Non-Scientist about Sustainable Living, Renewable Energy and the Power of the Sun.

Get Organized

WHEN SPIDERS UNITE THEY CAN TIE DOWN A LION.
-Ethiopian proverb

Save some for the next guy.


“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Solar power: Google

Solar power: Google pulls the plug - CSMonitor.com:
 By Alexei Oreskovic, Reuters / November 26, 2011

Solar power was at heart of Google's alternative energy efforts. But CEO Page has dropped the solar power and other energy projects to refocus Google on the Internet.


                    Solar panel installation at Google's Mountain View, Calif. headquarters is seen in the 2007 file photo. 

Google began making investments in 2007 to drive down the price of renewable energy in 2007, with a particular focus on solar power. But this past week, the company pulled the plug on those initiatives.

Google Inc has abandoned an ambitious project to make renewable energy cheaper than coal, the latest target of Chief Executive Larry Page's moves to focus the Internet giant on fewer efforts.

Google said on Tuesday that it was pulling the plug on seven projects, including Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal as well as a Wikipedia-like online encyclopedia service known as Knol.

The plans, which Google announced on its corporate blog, represent the third so-called ``spring cleaning'' announcement that Google has made since Google co-founder Page took the reins in April.

The changes come as Google is facing stiff competition in mobile computing and social networking from Apple Inc and Facebook, and as some investors have groused about rising spending at the world's No.1 Internet search company.

``To recap, we're in the process of shutting down a number of products which haven't had the impact we'd hoped for, integrating others as features into our broader product efforts, and ending several which have shown us a different path forward,'' wrote Google Senior Vice President of Operations Urs Holzle in the blog post.

Google said that it believed other institutions were better positioned to take its renewable energy efforts ``to the next level.''

In 2009, the company's so-called Green Energy Czar, Bill Weihl, told Reuters that he expected to demonstrate within a few years working technology that could produce renewable energy at a cheaper price than coal.

``It is even odds, more or less,'' Weihl said at the time. ``In three years, we could have multiple megawatts of plants out there.''

A Google spokesman said that Weihl had left Google earlier this month.

UGoogle noted in its blog post that it would continue efforts to generate ``cleaner, more efficient energy,'' including procuring renewable energy for its data centers.

Among the other projects included in Tuesday's ``spring cleaning'' were Google Knol, Google Search Timeline, Google Gear, Google Friend Connect, Google Bookmarks Lists and Google Wave, an ill-fated social networking and communication service that Google had previously said it would cease developing.

Google said that in December its email and calendar applications will no longer work with Gears technology, which allows Google's software to work when not connected to the Internet. Google said it is working to create offline capabilities into HTML5 technology instead.

Google Friend Connect, which allows website publishers to add social features to their sites, will be retired in March for all non-Blogger websites, Google said. It suggested that webnderwritten by:
Earlier this year, Google said it would ``wind down'' Google Labs, a website that offered public access to experimental Google products, as well as terminating products that let consumers monitor their home energy consumption and keep track of their personal health records.

This is a very discouraging announcement about Google Inc. dropping its efforts to bring down the cost of solar energy to a price cheaper than coal produced energy.  Hopes of an American corporation competing with China in the solar field are lessened by this decision.  Google had earmarked large sums of money to  Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal ; the departure is a corporate decision...



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