Google to spend hundreds of millions on developing renewable energy (goal = < coal)

San Fran Chron ^ | 11/28/2007 | Verne Kopytoff

[Uncledave]

Good for Google on a worthwhile goal using private dollars (though I'm not sure how the average GOOG shareholder feels about their assets deployed this way).

[Uncledave]

Renewable Energy Ping

Please Freep Mail me if you'd like on/off

[thackney]

Related thread, not duplicate

Google’s Goal: Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1931625/posts

[robomatik]

"I'm not sure how the average GOOG shareholder feels about their assets deployed this way"

my thoughts exactly

[Alter Kaker]

(though I'm not sure how the average GOOG shareholder feels about their assets deployed this way).

It's awfully hard to complain about this:

[Brad from Tennessee]

NEWSWEEK: AL GORE NOW WORTH MORE THAN $100 MILLION

[Since 2000, according to published reports, the former veep has transformed himself from a public servant with around $1 million in the bank to a sparkling private consultant with a net worth estimated to be north of $100 million. He’s a senior adviser to Google, a board member at Apple and now a newly minted general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the Silicon Valley venture-capital firm that made billions investing early in Netscape, Amazon and Google.]

http://www.newsweek.com/id/71011

[wolfpat]

Want to use less coal? Less "greenhouse" gases? Less pollution?

[JamesP81]

It's awfully hard to complain about this:

True. But past performance is not an indicator of future returns.

[SomeReasonableDude]

Quite good about it, actually. One of Google’s major operating expenses is powering their server farm and other high-power initiatives. If they can get an optimal renewable source to run a server farm, use it themselves and bring it to market ... well, you’ve heard the phrase ‘it prints money’ before, right?

This seems like it would be a very worthwhile investment.

[edcoil]

Last year when one of the founders got married, google invested in his new wife company. Next month, the other founder is getting married and this must be her new company.

Well, at least they kept it in the family.

[Uncledave]

Dang that’s a painful chart for this non-shareholder to see. One of my big coulda-shoulda-wouldas.

[Crawdad]

What does an advertising agency know about energy?

[Alter Kaker]

Dang that’s a painful chart for this non-shareholder to see. One of my big coulda-shoulda-wouldas.

You're telling me! I bought a little bit of Apple at $13 a share... enough to get my wife the Steven P. Jobs memorial kitchen renovation, but unfortunately not enough to retire on. Oh well!

[RightWhale]

Dividends zero per share.

[TheGeezer]

What is the PE ratio? 10,000,000? 1,000,000? When would you sell? Ever? Would you be a shareholder that would sell after the bubble burst?

Just some words of comfort...

By the by, money printers are very rare and depend less upon return from capital equipment (a windmill farm, for example) than from gains from those buying a product. Build the windmills to power a server farm, and then there's the staff to support them, med/dental benefits, parts inventory, yada, yada, yada. If you pay someone else to do those things, you won't have a money printer. You'll have utility bills.

I'm cynical. This is a Googlerama effort to be fashionable and as soon as the benefits fail to materialize, and the doom-Earth predictions fail also to materialize, it will be coal-nuclear as it was before.

[TheGeezer]

Dividends! Hell, I might settle for earnings.

[Alter Kaker]

Dividends zero per share.

$15 billion in revenue, $6.38 billion gross profit, 45.9% quarterly earnings growth.

[RightWhale]

Dividends are all you get if you’re lucky. That’s what is left of earnings after they invest in solar cells that work in the dark.

[RightWhale]

No dividends is no dividends. Own a billion shares it’s still zero dividends.

[Alter Kaker]

What is the PE ratio? 10,000,000? 1,000,000? When would you sell? Ever? Would you be a shareholder that would sell after the bubble burst?

The PE is about 50. High, but not ludicrously high. Google is earning real money and its earnings are rising very quickly.