Google launches utility company: Google Energy

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10427993-54.html

by abraham • 17 years ago

54 34 17 years ago

news.cnet.com

sophacles6• 17 years ago

dupe of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1037287

tvon• 17 years ago

I'm really starting to wish there was a way to merge submissions.

tokenadult• 17 years ago

I am too. I see that done on the online forum I spend the most time on after HN.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363

Maybe this should be a feature request.

waterlesscloud2• 17 years ago

Buy and sell electricity. Gooron!

wmeredith• 17 years ago

According to Google their intent is not to enter the utilities market, but to be able to more easily manage their goal of becoming a carbon neutral entity.

sophacles6• 17 years ago

Right, thats why they have the google power meter stuff too. Having a large pile of statistical data, and realtime data, and a major statistical analysis engine AND the ability to buy low and sell high for power is not at all a massive money maker.

sophacles6• 17 years ago

So I work in the power grid space, and talking to some collegues about this, turns out the behaviour in my speculation is actually VERY illegal. There are many regulations about keeping groups that handle these types of data and operations very separate. Otherwise it is essentially collusion.

abstractbill• 17 years ago

Actually, as interesting and exciting as it would definitely be to see Google in the utilities market, I think it's almost as interesting just that the people at Google feel strongly enough about carbon neutrality being a Good Thing that they are putting a really significant amount of time and money into achieving it.

coderdude• 17 years ago

I wonder if you can use that excuse for other purchases. Like buying a small country to more efficiently manage physical waste disposal, or something.

Hoff• 17 years ago

There is precedent.

Becoming your own government entity (Reedy Creek) seems to have worked out for Disney.

I for one welcome our new Google overlords.

clistctrl• 17 years ago

"The search giant formed a Delaware-based company called Google Energy "

Gotta love those Delaware state tax laws

icey2• 17 years ago

It's not just for tax purposes - Delaware also has the most established corporate law, so companies can expect fewer legal surprises.

eru• 17 years ago

Why do they have the most established corporate law? (Please explain for a non-American. Thanks!)

ortichi• 17 years ago

It would be interesting to see how they implement a market for this.

rebelvc• 17 years ago

Great news for internet startups. The more unfocused they are more companies they have to buy to catch up. Also, more time for startups to outmaneuver Google.

mtkd• 17 years ago

At some point one of these new, non-core, ventures will be identified by historians as the point at which Google made the same mistake as Microsoft and started out on the slow path to insignificance.

apu• 17 years ago

Do you really think that MS is in trouble because they focused on non-core ventures?

If anything, I'd say the complete opposite: they're in trouble because they're not good at focusing on the web, which is a major non-core venture for them (I think MS Windows & Office are their bread & butter).

Fundamentally, MS never "got" the internet, and they have too much weight to maneuver effectively now.

tentonova22• 17 years ago

Do you genuinely believe that a company with such a huge investment in data centers is demonstrating a lack of focus by concerning themselves with energy?

ElliotH• 17 years ago

It is advantageous to them to have power, sure - but it doens't really directly contribute to their goal of organising the worlds information does it?

IMO they would do better to offer hard-to-turn down deals to energy companies in return for guaranteed clean power. (it would be a hell of a thing to have on your power companies adverts)

btilly• 17 years ago

There is something key that you are missing here. Being unfocused is a core corporate value for Google. That's why they deliberately give every engineer 20% of their time to do pretty much whatever they want to do. Many popular products, such as gmail, started this way. Crazy as it sounds, so far this has been working out quite well for them.

The side effect is that you see apparently crazy things like some engineer deciding that he wants to install solar panels in the parking lot, which after one thing lead to another lead the company as a whole deciding to be carbon neutral. However the culture sees this as a benefit. After all that was good for morale, good for the corporate image, and the resulting focus on efficiency has been saving money. What's not to like?

qeorge• 17 years ago

I hate to be a downer, but this just sounds crazy to me. Yes, I understand that they use a ton of power and can probably get it cheaper this way, but this is an advertising and software company, not a power company.

Am I being a total neophobe or do others think they're drifting dangerously far away from their core competencies?

joubert• 17 years ago

Google's stated mission: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

I.e. ALL the information on earth (they may need reword from "world" to galaxy or whatever in the future).

Whenever they need a resource or perform an activity at scale and the existing solutions suck they like to invent better ways (e.g. dutch auction instead of investment bank cabal when listing on a stock exchange).

PS: I'm not a big fan of the corporatist phrase, "core competency". I dislike it almost as much as I dislike the phrase "best practice", for the similar reasons.

DaniFong3• 17 years ago

Actually the practice of companies managing their own energy preceded the creation of the electric grid, and preceded the existence of software companies by over a century. Even today most large scale engineering outfits are both vertically integrated and use vertical integration to launch into other markets (e.g. General Electric, and Tata, which was a steel company.)

Google launches utility company: Google Energy

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