Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Google Announces Energy Initiative

Google today announced a new energy initiative designed to produce clean energy for less than the cost of coal power generation. A project of Google's foundation, Google.org, and Google Corporate, initial goals call for producing a full Gigawatt of power - enough to provide for the energy needs of a city the size of San Francisco. Read about it at Tim O'Reilly's site, O'Reilly's Radar. If you are wondering why an Internet giant is playing in the Energy space, just imagine how much power it must take to run a GooglePlex. O'Reilly likes the idea, and so do I.

Also today, reports surfaced about the Gdrive online storage and backup service that Google is due to announce in short order (the company declined comment today). It looks like this service formalizes and featurizes the functionality the company already offers users of several other products including Google Docs, Google Video and Picasaweb online photo archive. Again, a welcome move from the author's point of view. Readers of Pop Impulse know that I gave it up to Google long ago, and am totally delighted with the results. There's a reason the company's shares are around $700. Google gets it. And, of course, they're not Microsoft.

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