Aplus.net Blog

Google, the giant that towers over the Internet, is getting into the Green Game. From yesterday’s New York Times:

Google said it would spend hundreds of millions of dollars, part of that to hire engineers and energy experts to investigate alternative energies like solar, geothermal and wind power. The effort is aimed at reducing Google’s own mounting energy costs to run its vast data centers, while also fighting climate change and helping to reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.

“We see technologies we think can mature into very capable industries that can generate electricity cheaper than coal,” said Larry Page, a Google founder and president of products, “and we don’t see people talking about that as much as we would like.”

The initiative, which Google is calling RE < C, using mathematical symbols to denote “renewable energy cheaper than coal,” will be based in Google’s research and development group.

The company also said that Google.org, the philanthropic for-profit subsidiary that Google seeded in 2004 with three million shares of its stock, would invest in energy start-ups.

Google says its goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy — enough to power the city of San Francisco — more cheaply than coal-generated electricity. The company predicted that this can be accomplished in “years, not decades.”

Certainly, this comes as no surprise to industry watchers. As the leader of arguably the world’s most essential industry, as well as one of the world’s largest companies to boot, it’s in Google’s best interests to be at the forefront of all new technology. (The political advantages certainly don’t hurt, either.)

But is the company large and established enough to take on this bold new frontier?

For some Wall Street analysts, the most relevant question is not whether Google can save the world, but whether the company’s idealism may ultimately distract it from its core businesses of organizing the world’s information and selling online ads.

Hmm. Somehow, we don’t think they’re too worried.