Google searching for green causes
Gareth Davies/Getty Images Expanding upon its recent humanitarian efforts, Google is making a concerted effort to go green. Last week, the search engine company launched an industry initiative with Intel to promote energy efficiency in computing to help cut greenhouse gas emissions. The “Climate Savers Computers Initiative” focuses on addressing the energy waste from PCs, ...
Gareth Davies/Getty Images
Expanding upon its recent humanitarian efforts, Google is making a concerted effort to go green.
Last week, the search engine company launched an industry initiative with Intel to promote energy efficiency in computing to help cut greenhouse gas emissions. The “Climate Savers Computers Initiative” focuses on addressing the energy waste from PCs, and includes plans for a certification program to recognize energy-efficient computers (here’s hoping they get Microsoft on board). And now, in addition to announcing its intention to go carbon neutral by the end of this year, Google is launching two more projects with a green tinge.
First, Google Earth is teaming up with a Brazilian Indian tribe with the aim of countering deforestation in the Amazon. The project aims to capture vivid images that could deter loggers and miners from cutting down trees and digging for gold in the tribe’s reservation. It hopes to help police the reservation site and provide evidence to authorities if and when destruction occurs. Second, Google has just launched what the Financial Times calls its “first significant philanthropic initiative”: an $11 million contribution to speed the development of the plug-in hybrid electric car, though this isn’t the first time Google has expressed an interest in alternative energy.
What does all this green investment mean? Does Google really care about the environment, or is it simply trying to reassure the 80 percent of U.S. consumers who believe it’s important to support green companies? And as the FT highlights,
Unlike other philanthropists, [Google.org‘s leaders have] opted to keep the bulk of their financial pledges outside a non-profit structure, a move designed to give them more flexibility in deciding how to spend money for social good, including the option of doing so through for-profit ventures.
Of course, it’s possible to earn profits while supporting environmental causes. But if Google really wants to prove its environmental bona fides, Sergey Brin and Larry Page may want to reconsider jetting around in their personal Boeing 767.
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