
Google drops the axe on its internal renewable energy work - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/11/google-drops-the-axe-on-its-internal-renewable-energy-work.ars
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patrickaljord
Here is what Google said:

> We will continue our work to generate cleaner, more efficient
> energy—including our on-campus efforts, procuring renewable energy for our
> data centers, making our data centers even more efficient and investing more
> than $850 million in renewable energy technologies.

So they're still investing close to a billion dollar in renewable energy.

[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/more-spring-
cleaning-...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/more-spring-cleaning-out-
of-season.html)

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JonnieCache
I always thought it'd be funny if it turned out google solved the energy
crisis in their 20% time. Imagine how smug they'd be. It'd make apple look
pretty stupid.

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mahyarm
Even although they make less money than apple by an order of magnitude, i've
always felt like google was the more innovative engineering organization.
Apple I feel is more of an industrial design organization at heart in all
layers.

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redthrowaway
>Even although they make less money than apple by an order of magnitude,

Google reported revenues of ~30B for FY10, Apple reported ~60B. That's only an
order of magnitude in binary.

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pasbesoin
This is a mistake. Energy is the next/current big challenge, one in need of
research (including and especially domestic, for the U.S.). Google retained
some of my loyalty by continuing to pursue this, including such research.

Perhaps I'm just taking it personally. Nonetheless, mistake. 1) Google becomes
ever more "just a web site company". (Well, and phones that access the web and
apps hosted on the web.) 2) Google's starting to throw over its non-web
projects the same way it's been discarding its web projects and acquisitions.
This pattern may begin to seriously shake others' belief in and commitment to
long term investments in their products and technologies, in both areas.

Whatever their future, the blush is off the rose (or however that metaphor's
supposed to go), IMO.

Or maybe I'm just pissed that the U.S. cannot manage a coherent "next
generation" energy policy, and the last player I had any hope in just got out.

P.S. I guess I should qualify this by saying my opinion is not tne most
informed. So, again, this is in the nature of a personal reaction.

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synnik
Some of us are working full-time on renewable energy projects - my company is
one of them. The US may not have a policy in place, but the Senators we have
met with are supportive of our efforts, showing us where more general business
policies can be helpful to our business.

FYI, the problem with developing renewable energy is not the actual energy
production itself. Every inventor out there has a "better" turbine to try, The
barriers lie in regulatory limitations and the massive amount of capital
needed to build out projects.

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marshallp
Because they're shifting resources to google x, expect big announcements on
the scale of self driving car from them soon

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iandanforth
Clearly this is what we want to hear, but do you know something concrete? Feel
free to add teaser dates, vague references to AI, or the word 'space' in your
response.

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marshallp
Watch sergey's interview with tim o'reilly on youtube from last week, he
mentions that something out of x lab will be coming out by the end of this
year. Also, the fact that he's not actively working on google+ and their
cutting of previously ambitious projects like energy, google health, etc and
the new york times article mentions stanford and nyu, welll known neural
network researchers (andrew ng and yann lecunn) means it's probably ai
related, probably neural networks applied to computer vision. Space, i
probably don't think so.

Of course this is all speculation, i don't have any inside info.

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geogra4
The end of Google health was really sad. A centralized medical records system
would be an incredible time and money saver for healthcare.

Although I'd love a self-driving car, and I think it will certainly save a lot
of lives.

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mahyarm
A centralized medical records system is more political, social and procedural
than any sort of technological revolution. The technology to create one has
been around for decades.

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mathattack
It's easy to sink a lot of money into renewables. (Look at our govt) Great
that Google didn't have the hubris to chase this too long. Being great at
search doesn't mean solving world peace, boiling oceans, or solving the energy
crisis.

