

Y Combinator Firm CO2Stats Caught in Frenzy of Environmental Cost of Google Search - bbuderi
http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/01/12/tempest-in-a-tea-kettle-co2stats-founder-caught-in-frenzy-around-environmental-costs-of-a-google-search/

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Prrometheus
Publicity is good, as long as its not "cuill" publicity.

On another topic: is there any goal quite so vacuous as "raising awareness"
about something?

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TomOfTTB
I'm not sure that's true. I mean, in many businesses it's true that any
publicity is good publicity. But when your business is dependant on you being
an authoritative source bad publicity has a real impact. What's the point of a
site that reports CO2 stats if the guy has proven he can't be trusted to give
accurate stats?

(The link says he claims not to have been the source for the article just for
the record)

You're probably right in this instance. His startup was so small before and
the fallout is so big that he may very well get more new visitors than he
loses this time around. But I'll be curious to see if they make return trips
or whether they assume he can't be trusted and go on their way.

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Prrometheus
I have no idea which kind of publicity this will end up being, by the way.
Environmentalism itself is so popular that it would take a pretty big screw up
for CO2stats to be irreparably damaged. There is certainly a market.

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ramchip
Firestorm, sensational, tempest, frenzy... I think the guy's overdoing it a
bit.

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jpwagner
best marketing move since steorn put that ad in theeconomist!

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greendestiny
Not very repeatable getting the Times to troll Google unless you get a PR
company to feed them the flamebait nonsense and then give a quote to go with
it. I suspect CO2stats has just been lucky. I'm sure this will be good
publicity for them if they keep handling it as well as they have.

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rokhayakebe
Now, more companies will be aware of their environmental impact.

