Please Freep Mail me if you'd like on/off
Posted on 11/28/2007 11:23:45 AM PST by Uncledave
(11-27) 13:27 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- Google Inc. says it will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop renewable energy as part of an ambitious plan to clean the environment and reduce the company's own power bill.
The Mountain View company said Tuesday that it will open its deep pockets to foster innovation in solar, wind and geothermal technology in the hopes of making green energy cheaper than power produced by burning coal.
To start the initiative, Google said that it will invest tens of millions of dollars in renewable power, spread over research and development and related investments, in 2008.
"Solar isn't currently cheaper than coal," Google co-founder Larry Page said in a conference call. "That's the point of this - to get it there."
Google also hopes to license any technology spawned from the effort to other companies so that they, too, can reduce their reliance on more polluting forms of energy while saving money. Co-founder Sergey Brin raised the possibility that the fees will be a new source of revenue for his company, but insisted that the goal isn't to rake in big profit.
About 40 percent of the world's electricity comes from coal-fired power plants. Providing an affordable, cleaner alternative would go a long way in reducing pollution, particularly in China, where coal plants are proliferating.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Please Freep Mail me if you'd like on/off
Related thread, not duplicate
Google’s Goal: Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1931625/posts
my thoughts exactly
It's awfully hard to complain about this:
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
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.
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.
Dang that’s a painful chart for this non-shareholder to see. One of my big coulda-shoulda-wouldas.
What does an advertising agency know about energy?
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!
Dividends zero per share.
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.
Dividends! Hell, I might settle for earnings.
$15 billion in revenue, $6.38 billion gross profit, 45.9% quarterly earnings growth.
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.
No dividends is no dividends. Own a billion shares it’s still zero dividends.
The PE is about 50. High, but not ludicrously high. Google is earning real money and its earnings are rising very quickly.
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