Google saves energy by spending money

google hand of god

In an article in The New York Times today, Google announced it would be spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to go from “the Internet company with a seemingly limitless source of revenue” to “finding limitless sources of energy.” Clever play on those words, Brad Stone. Clever.

However, what’s kind of appalling about the whole thing is the flack economists gave the idea. From the Times:

For some Wall Street analysts, the most relevant question is not whether Google can save the world, but whether the company?s idealism may ultimately distract it from its core businesses of organizing the world?s information and selling online ads.

?My first reaction when I read about this was, ?Is this a joke??? said Jordan Rohan of RBC Capital Markets. ?I?ve written off Google?s competition as a threat to Google?s long-term market share gains. But I haven?t written off Google?s own ability to stretch too far and try to do too much. Ultimately, that is the biggest risk in the Google story.?

Yeah, spending “hundreds of millions” of a billion-dollar net worth company’s money to ultimately save it said money kind of is a bad idea. Who wants to help the rest of the world, anyway?
Ugh. I say it’s about time a huge company invested some money into alternative energy resources. Let’s face it ? putting “go green” bumper stickers on your Prius is actually kind of counterproductive, wouldn’t you say? (Someone’s got to be mass-producing those suckers, and using valuable energy to do so.)

image courtesy of Businessweek