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It takes money to change
Google is putting its market power where its mouth is: http://bit.ly/1yiEz2 Its goal is to HALVE the cost of solar, or better. Can't happen without big economic forces pushing for good things.
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Gmail eco friendly
The colors gmail uses consume less moniter power
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Gmail is the greenest email system!
This article by greenbiz.com touts gmail as the greenest email system. All computer use requires energy, but the efficiency of the data centers you're utilizing when you're online make a huge difference on your carbon impact. Google has been a major force in greening its data centers (by using renewable energy in some of them, recycling their cooling water, and so on). And so, greenbiz says, their Power Usage Effectiveness is rated better than any other in the industry. http://www.greenbiz.com/engage/blog/2009/08/21/gmail-worlds-greenest-email
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Google's Clean Energy 2030 Plan
Has anyone seen Google's Clean Energy 2030 Plan? While the thought behind it is fine indeed, it is little more than a dreamer's idea, casting broad general actions for how we can reduce our carbon footprint with little explanation for where the money comes from: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/15x31uzlqeo5n/1#
While everything in it sounds nice, it needs rational support for how these actions will be met. One of their suppositions: "Keeping electricity demand FLAT at the 2008 level, rather than allowing it to grow 25% by 2030," is particularly surprising - how are we going to keep electricity demand constant as more cars will be powered by it (another part of their plan)?
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Renewable Energy < Carbon
Google should be applauded for using its might to advance the green movement. They're collecting large amounts of money to invest in creating 1 GW of renewable energy, with solar, wind, and geothermal. Realizing that all consumer decisions are budget-based, and all corporate decisions are profit-based, Google is making efforts to scale RE to make it commercially viable to everyday Americans. Check out the renewable energy part of their Google Green site: http://www.google.org/rec.html
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collecting the world's data
Google uses its astronomical profits from web-based advertising to provide myriad online services for absolutely no cost to web-surfers: mail, browser, online file sharing, Paypal, media sharing, maps with street-view, news, and the list goes on. Check out Google Labs and you see hundreds of other projects they worked on for internet users that never made it mainstream. Besides being the "best company to work for" they have set a very noble goal for themselves: collect and streamline all the world's data. Their technology is fresh, and new, so the security for it isn't perfect. They've recently had (overpublicized) data security scares with their gmail service, but you can bet that kinks will be worked out. They hire the best and brightest (relentless recruitment), and they are determined to make their web-based operating system an attractive alternative to Windows and Mac. Setbacks in the beginning are to be expected, and they will undoubtedly make the email as secure as possible by the time they try to get everyone to move on to a system that attaches all your personal data directly to the internet.
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