Google.org, a For-Profit Charity

Google has set up a subsidiary, Google.org, a for-profit philanthropy with initial capital of a billion dollars. Not being organized on a tax-free basis carries both advantages and drawbacks. From the article: "Unlike most charities, this one will be for-profit, allowing it to fund start-up companies, form partnerships with venture capitalists and even lobby Congress. It will also pay taxes." One of Google.org's first projects is the development of a plug-in hybrid vehicle that achieves a mileage rating equivalent to 100 MPG.

Comments

Non-registration link

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a link to the same story that doesn't require registration

http://news.com.com/Googles+unusual+approach+to+ph ilanthropy/2100-1014_3-6115533.html

Re:Non-registration link

[shreevatsa]

Wow. I was (pleasantly) surprised when the Hindi film songs show, and parts of the regional shows, started showing perfect subtitles along with the songs a few months ago, and I was amazed that Doordarshan (our (India's) government-run national channel) would take such efforts, but now I realise it's being sponsored by Google!
This is seriously a great idea. For those who doubt it will help, consider that Finnish children practically learn reading by watching Finnish subtitles of American TV shows, and they are the best.

Odd.

[Tavor]

Odd that Google would take a for-profit route, considering how many "non-profits" lobby congress. (I use that term loosely, because of certian Telco and Music NPOs.) Granted, I would LOVE to see Google.org create a better Hybrid, counter the Telcos at their own game, and hopefully devolop a Nationwide Broadband/Fiber Initiative.

Re:Odd.

[zobier]

I would LOVE to see Google.org [snip] devolop a Nationwide Broadband/Fiber Initiative.

Somehow, I don't think improving America's Internet access is the kind of project this .org is going to be pursuing.

Re:Odd.

[BacOs]

Odd that Google would take a for-profit route

I don't find it odd at all. I'm involved with several FLOSS projects and one of them recently researched starting its own foundation (non-profit) or corporation (for profit). Everyone I talked to (including people associated with the Mozilla Foundation and the Python and Apache Software Foundations) recommended starting a for profit corporation. The restrictions placed on federally tax exempt (501(c)(3)) organizations was too great in their opinion. With a for profit corporation, you have much fewer restrictions.

Re:Odd.

[argoff]

The truth is that most people need is the power to help themselves, not aid. For example, if a person in LA went down to the store, bought and cooked up some hot-dogs, and then sold them on the street corner - he would likely be in jail, taxed, and fined over 40K before the night was out - and then be forced to get permits and inspections at great expense to himself. I'm sorry, no argument about government protecting people can justify that kind of behavior.

In Africa, a large amount of US aid was used to build a milk plant. But it was not near any cows or roads, and ended up shutting down. Those kinds of mistakes are much more rare in the private sector, because there is accountabillity and control. Many aid loans were blown by corrupt leaders, who then left it to the citizens to pay back.

In many countries, investors are more than happy to build factories, roads, mines, infrastructure, and the jobs that go with them. But not if government officials demand bribes, permits, taxes, and high fees at every step of the process, and not if they demand high fees on everything imported and exported, and not if the judiciary is so corrupt or slow that they have no recource if land or other items are taken from them. If you had 100 million dollars, would you put it in Venesuela or North Korea right now? People who have paid a bitter price. That's a lot of money, and then they wonder why they have employment problems.

In China, millions of people died from hunger until the farmers were able to have property rights, then the problem disapeared and the economy started to boom. Really, who would slave away on a farm where they own none of the take and none of the land. Once again, the people in China didn't need charity nor help from the government, what they needed was property rights. Charity would have prolonged the problem and made it worse. What they needed was the power to help themselves, once they got it then the poverty problems took care of themselves naturally.

Re:Odd.

[drDugan]

Those restrictions are there for a reason. I agree they are sometimes onerous. However, they make it so that the organization actually must do charitable things, and they make impossible to do the "screw everyone and take the money" things.

Re:Odd.

[UbuntuDupe]

For comparison, I remember a while ago hearing about No Sweat Apparel, another charity-like organization that tries to replace current clothing production with (supposely) that produced under non-exploitative conditions. They explain here why they want to be for-profit -- access to more capital, rewards for those who risked a lot, and to promote a viable industry model.

(Of course, they do use child labor for their advertising, so take it for what it's worth...)

Re:Odd.

[OakLEE]

considering how many "non-profits" lobby congress

Yes non-profits (specifically 501(c)(3) non-profits) lobby congress, but there are tons of restrictions on what they can and cannot lobby for or against. Any violation will result in the revocation of their tax-free status. Most of them usually get around this by registering a sister corporation (i think it's 501(c)(4), though post campain finance reform most of them might be 527's) and have that wing do all of the lobbying. They also usually take care to seperate the streams of funding for each operation. Google.org by going for-profit avoids this hassel from the lobbying perspective and can directly use their funds for any lobbying they see fit.

Re:Odd.

[TooMuchToDo]

Agreed. I've done much research on this, and the downside of paying taxes is offset by plenty of benefits. 501(c)(3) has it's place, but it shouldn't be used everywhere.

-b

Re:Odd.

[xappax]

it was not near any cows or roads, and ended up shutting down. Those kinds of mistakes are much more rare in the private sector, because there is accountabillity and control.

Ever heard of the Bhopal disaster? It was one of the most deadly industrial accidents ever, and it was due to the negligence of Union Carbide employees (a US corporation). How about the Exxon Valdez? Yet another vast catastrophe caused by irresponsible employees of a US corporation. Or hey, a little closer to geek-home - how about when MasterCard allowed 40 million credit card numbers to be stolen (the largest such leak ever reported) due to poor software design?

The funny thing about these incidents of corporate irresponsibility is that not only did these companies have totally stupid policies that were very likely to result in danger, once disaster struck they were totally unaccountable for the damage they caused.

It would be moronic to claim that the government knows best, or that massive bureaucracy is an effective way to make decisions, but this song and dance about how profit-driven instutitions magically become the most efficient and responsible is absurd.

In many countries, investors are more than happy to build factories, roads, mines, infrastructure, and the jobs that go with them.

Yes, those factories are often sweatshops. Those roads often damage delicate environment which is needed for eco-tourism, scientific research, or agriculture. Those mines can be unregulated death-traps for miners in addition to causing toxic runoff pollution of local water supplies. None of these problems concern the investor, just the local population. In short, the "infrastructure" eagerly pushed by foriegn investors really isn't infrastructure for the improvement of the country or it's people so much as infrastructure for the improvement of the investor's bottom line. Sure, some officials are just corrupt fucks, but has it ever occured to you that there might be good reasons to try to restrict, regulate, and/or tax foreign companies trying to exploit your sovereign nation?

I agree with the sentiment that people need to be given the freedom to take care of themselves, but I don't think that empowering and depending on exploitive investors and multinational conglomerates is the way to give people that freedom.

Re:Odd.

[rs79]

"Those restrictions are there for a reason. I agree they are sometimes onerous. However, they make it so that the organization actually must do charitable things, and they make impossible to do the "screw everyone and take the money" things."

A one word rebuttal: ICANN.

Re:Odd.

[fmoliveira]

In Africa, a large amount of US aid was used to build a milk plant. But it was not near any cows or roads, and ended up shutting down. Those kinds of mistakes are much more rare in the private sector, because there is accountabillity and control. Many aid loans were blown by corrupt leaders, who then left it to the citizens to pay back.

Here in the 3rd world, when anything that is not private do anything that costs money, we are sure that this government or organization overpaid for it, and its administrator got part of the money back for himself. Its the rule, not the exception. These governments should be prohibited from asking for loans, its very annoying to pay high taxes that go down the drain to pay interests from a loan where all the money was thrown in the drain :-(

Re:Odd.

[N1EY]

Does anyone on the website have a grasp of tax law? A not-for-profit organization can own a for-profit entity. It simply makes very little sense other than a publicity stunt. As a stockholder of Google I would be concerned about the waste of my money.

Re:Odd.

[renoX]

>inspections at great expense to himself. I'm sorry, no argument about government protecting people can justify that kind of behavior.

Somehow, I think that those who suffered from food poisoning would disagree with you.

As for the reset, oversimplifying problems is not a good way to discuss.

Re:Odd.

[jpmorgan]

Bhopal was 50.1% owned by an Indian government-run company, and operated by that company. The accident was caused by changes to the plant's design demanded by the local government, and the mismanagement of the plant (by the local government). Its sister plant in the US (owned and operated by Union Carbide) notably did not have any similar accidents.

Re:Odd.

[PeeAitchPee]

If you had 100 million dollars, would you put it in Venesuela or North Korea right now?

Neither. I'm sick of seeing my tax dollars going to countries full of people who have been brainwashed into hating us. We have enough problems with poverty etc. right here in the US.

Re:Odd.

[ajs]

Here's the thing: in all of those cases, someone lost billions for the company *and* trashed their reputation, incurring further loss in the marketplace. That's a mistake that that company is not going to want to repeat. Are you saying that you think a federally-managed oil distribution network would never have had a major oil spill? Are you saying that you think that government-run tool factories would never have created an environmental disaster? Can you imagine the abuse and outright privacy disasters that would ensue if your credit cards were directly managed by the government?

No thanks, I'll continue to attempt to put political and financial pressure on these companies to do the right thing, but I'll never be so foolish as to think that the job would be done better if it weren't in the private sector. For confirmation of that, I have only to look at the atrocities committed by damn near every government ever.

Re:Odd.

[jfengel]

Strictly speaking a non-profit is supposed to stay out of lobbying Congress. They're starting to crack down on the non-profit status of churches who get into politics. There's a separate section of the tax code, 527, for political organizations. They get most of the same tax benefits, but there's a lot more scrutiny as to where the money comes from and where it goes.

Re:Odd.

[spun]

Quoted directly from Union Carbide's statement, "The Bhopal plant was owned and operated by Union Carbide India, Limited (UCIL), an Indian company in which Union Carbide Corporation held just over half the stock. The other stockholders included Indian financial institutions and thousands of private investors in India."

No mention of government ownership, and a clear statement that UCC owned over half the stock. The site makes no mention of government mismanagement, instead claiming intentional sabotage. If UCC is willing to make a claim that patently ridiculous, don't you think they would have mentioned other factors mitigating their culpability, such as government mismanagement?

Recent documents, obtained through discovery in the course of a lawsuit against Union Carbide for environmental contamination before a New York Federal District Court revealed that Carbide had exported "untested, unproven technology" to the Indian plant. That is partly why the US sister plant did not fail. Also, unlike the US plant, no disaster plans had been prepared for the Bhopal plant. Reports issued months before the incident by scientists within the Union Carbide corporation warned of the possibility of an accident almost identical to that which occurred in Bhopal . The reports were ignored outright and never made it to senior staff .

Due to falling sales, staff had been laid off and safety checks became less and less frequent. Slip-bind plates that prevent water from pipes being cleaned leaking into the MIC tanks via faulty valves were not installed. Their installation had not been included on the cleaning checklist. At the time of the event, the MIC tank refrigeration unit was disabled to save money, and some of its coolant was being used elsewhere. A simple press of a button in the control room would have activated it to at least use the remaining coolant, but this was overlooked by staff.

The gas scrubber was placed on standby, and therefore did not attempt to clean escaping gases with sodium hydroxide (caustic soda), which may have brought the concentration down to a safe level. The water curtain that may have reduced the concentration of the gas was only set to ~13 m and did not reach the gas; it was not designed to contain a leak of such magnitude. Though the audible external alarm was activated to warn the residents of Bhopal, it was quickly silenced to avoid causing panic among the residents. Thus, many continued to sleep, unaware of the unfolding drama, and those that had woken assumed any problem had been sorted. The flare tower used to burn off gases before they are allowed to escape into the air was inoperational pending repairs.

The families of the people who died in Bhopal each received about $2,200.

This is all a matter of public record, easy to research online. The BBC has a very good Bhopal resource center for anyone who wishes to learn more about this horrible example of corporate malfeasance. Without proper regulation, corporations behave in completely sociopathic ways.

Do you enjoy lying through your teeth about horrible disasters in order to prop up your failed and murderous ideology? Do you enjoy playing apologist for sociopaths?

Re:Odd.

[bigpat]

considering how many "non-profits" lobby congress

Yes, I doubt this is a primary reason. I've been researching setting up a small non-profit and as long as lobbying is just a small portion of the activities (not sure of the exact percentage) then you can lobby Congress. Just can't speak out for or against a particular candidate, unless you make it clear it is not in your official capacity as an officer or director of a non profit.

Really, it seems that the ability to fund companies that are helping people seems most compelling. Imagine a person comes up with a technology that has the potential to help billions of people, but which would supplant another technology which is very profitable. If there is a company willing to step in and fund such a startup, that is certainly worth having to pay some taxes each year.

Re:Odd.

[shurikt]

The reasons you would want to become a 501(c)(3) foundation are so that you can accept tax-deductible donations, and (with the proper state paperwork) you can be freed from paying state sales tax. The biggest restrictions are on paying and loaning money to directors, and on selling stock in your own company. There's no restriction on making a "profit" per se, you just can't pay it out to shareholders or directors. Profit generally must be reinvested in the foundation. If you have no intention of taking donations, there's really no reason to waste time on the 501(c)(3).

Re:Odd.

[DragonWriter]

Those restrictions are there for a reason. I agree they are sometimes onerous. However, they make it so that the organization actually must do charitable things, and they make impossible to do the "screw everyone and take the money" things.

Yes, the restrictions exist for a reason. But they do not merely require that the organization must do charitable things, even if that is the intend. They very narrowly circumscribe the activities of the organization (particularly in the case of organizations that are not merely tax exempt, but also have tax-deductible donations.) Now, where these restrictions are compatible with what you are trying to do, that's not a big deal. Where they aren't, they are a big deal. If your vision includes at its core activities that are incompatible with the restrictions, then you've got a choice to make.

Choosing not to get non-profit status does not make your operation intrinsically evil. It may make people more cautious dealing with it, both because they don't get the same advantages from contributing and you aren't held to the restrictions that tax-exempt operations are. But if you've got a vision for doing good that is incompatible with the restrictions placed on tax exempt operations, then its the only way to realize that vision.

And, no, the restrictions on tax-exempt organizations do not make it impossible to do the "screw everyone and take the money" things, as you say, even if they are theoretically intended to. Scams using tax-exempt charities are not all unheard of.

Re:Odd.

[aevans]

Ever hear of Chernobyl, or the Aral Sea, or the Gulag? Communism won't save the environment, protect workers, or safeguard your privacy. Communism isn't an economic system. It is propoganda designed to take away freedom. If you're taking away freedom, you can call yourself Anarcho-syndicalists or Nazis for all I care. Your real message is "Give me your freedom" no matter how you sugar coat with with "and then I will..."

Re:Odd.

[Deliveranc3]

In many countries, investors are more than happy to build factories, roads, mines, infrastructure, and the jobs that go with them. But not if government officials demand High Wages. If you had 100 million dollars, would you put it in Venesuela or North Korea right now? People who have paid a bitter price. That's a lot of money, and then they wonder why they have employment problems.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Odd.

[capfatcat]

What is worse to digest: Corruption or the illusion of transparancy? Maybe someone should ask James Baker....

I've always wondered about the schizofrenic nature of capitalism that first juxtaposes big business vs. the little guy and then creates charity foundations to confirm the little guy that in fact he is so small that he needs help.
It would be interesting to see the birth of the first charity foundation that investigates how its parent donor is stiffling the competition of the same small guy that in recycled form is used to quell the desire of the donor to reach moral high grounds. This could give the small guy a real break. It should cost less too for everybody.
It should suprise nobody that charity has not brought Cambodia a search engine for missing persons and Malawi a booming IT industry. In general life expectancy rates might go up, but please do not wise-up the small guy too much. He might Bangalore back at you.

Maybe google is just a bit less hypocrite.

Re:Odd.

[aeoo]

The problem is that giving one man property rights always and necessarily comes at the expense of another man's property rights. See? People in Congress have a right to accept bribes and put up toll gates (not really, but do you see what I'm saying?).

Property rights are not a clean solution, because eventually someone starts hoarding more and more property and puts up their own, private, tollgates for others to use it. At some point it is really no different from the government. The only difference is size. Once a business goes above a certain size, it is in essence a government and has the same impact on society and environment as a government. A large enough business acts exactly like the government. When businesses get large enough they also get corrupted and bureaucratic just like the government.

So, I understand what you're saying. And I even like your example with the hot dogs, and agree with it. But you haven't thought this problem all the way through it seems.

Re:Odd.

[xappax]

Are you saying that you think that government-run tool factories would never have created an environmental disaster?

No, actually I'm really, really not saying that. Many people on Slashdot tend to conflate criticism of the private sector with a blind endorsement of the government. I think this "public institution vs. private institution" dichotomy is a false one.

You should know that I hate the government. I'd like to see it not just downsized, but eventually completely phased out. I believe that as a rule, governments are oppressive. However, I am not so naive as to think that government is the only type of institution that can be oppressive. Any centralized institution that gets it's hands on enough power, be it political, economic, or military, is going to abuse that power by screwing over the powerless.

I think that the only way to have a truly free society is to break down those centralized institutions and spread that power as evenly as possible. This is not a utopian prescription, just a general rule about the nature of institutions. Power corrupts, so it's best to keep the power in as many different hands as possible, lest one president, CEO, or general decide he wants to be king.

Re:Odd.

[xappax]

I respect your desire to remain free from authoritarian communism, and I would never ask you to surrender your freedom to such a government, because I despise any government that would seek to restrict people's right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness.

I similarly ask that you respect other people's desire to remain free from the overbearing authority of international mega-corporations with no respect for our lives, liberty, or happiness.

Well it has to suceed

[cheese-cube]

The new director of Google.org is Larry Brilliant!

Re:Well it has to suceed

[zobier]

The new director of Google.org is Larry Brilliant!

That's Dr. Brilliant.
I'm just waiting for Capt. Obvious to join the conversation.

Re:Well it has to suceed

[ID10T5]

Is he one of the guys in the Guinness commercials?

Re:Well it has to suceed

[grammar fascist]

Well, we haven't had to wait long for Mr. Pithy Rejoinder, have we?

Re:Well it has to suceed

[willisachimp]

... and he's trained under a Hindu Guru, and is a holder of, amongst others, the "International Health Hero Award".

Has anyone told Marvel comics about this guy yet?

W.

Re:Well it has to suceed

[Daetrin]

Captain Subtext isn't a real person Steve.

Re:Can't wait

[ozmanjusri]

I can't wait to see how Google finds a way to profit from a battered women's shelter.

Well, this IS Slashdot. News for Nerds. Things that batter.

/Me going to hell. What a downer.

Plug-in is inline with Google's existing vision

[rsborg]

I know that Google employees receive a $5000 discount (plus a few other perks that I'm not clear on) on any purchase of a hybrid vehicle that gets 45 mpg (ie, Prius, Insight or Civic Hybrid).

I think one or both of the founders drive a Prius as well, so this would be inline with their vision of what can be done to make the world a better place.

interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I submitted this story (same exact NY time article even) 3 days ago, when it was news.

Anyhow, the term "non-profit" evokes a warm fuzzy feeling that it shouldn't. John D Rockefeller did more to save the whales (via kerosene) than GreenPeace ever will.

Re:interesting

[jibjibjib]

I don't understand what's news about it. Google.org has existed for years. The article says it was formed by the end of 2004.

Re:interesting

[Mike Peel]

You think that's bad? I got half of the story nearly a year back, and posted it here. From my "recent submissions" list:

Google creates $1bn charity fund Wednesday October 12, @01:58PM Rejected

But hey, that's Slashdot for you.

Re:interesting

[Deliveranc3]

Kerosene didn't stop the cosmetics industry.

Greenpeace did.

Hybrid Vehicles?

[atomicstrawberry]

First we'll have the gCar, and it will cost far more than it's actually worth, but investors will cough up the money anyway. Apple will follow suit with their iCar, which will be made out of translucent white plastic, but will only run certain fuels. After making a suitable amount of money selling their iCar, they will begin to market successively smaller iCars, and charge more to get them in black.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Redmond, Steve Ballmer will be plotting to 'fucking kill' them both. Unfortunately by this stage he'll have put his back out throwing chairs, so he'll instead switch to 'fucking kill'ing them with a motorised chair with wheels, which Microsoft will market it as the Zume.

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[Cheapy]

A motorized chair? As opposed to motorized wheels? I'd pay to see that thing!

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[dattaway]

SONY will have their line of cars as well, but with DRM'd hydrogen fuel supply sticks. If you try to use an unauthorized fuel source, the vehicle spontaneously explodes, but not until it quietly passes root emissions out of its tailpipe to nearby vehicles.

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[atomicstrawberry]

It's his greatest invention: a chair that throws itself

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[Cadallin]

Apple car only run certain fuels? What's that supposed to mean? Apple is generally quite open about allowing people to run whatever they want on the Hardware they sell (their computers anyway, not their Consumer Electronics) Back in the power days, you could run MacOS or any of a number of variants of POWER Unix (Linux, BSD, etc) now you have the option of running OS X, BSD, Linux, or even Windows. The hardware isn't exactly closed in terms of what it can run.

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[Griim]

Damn...I didn't realize until I read your comment, but the long-running joke about "driving your Google to the Google to pick up the latest Google" is in its first steps to becoming an actual reality!

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[Mr Z]

But to make it successful, he'll need developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, ....

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[ozmanjusri]

he'll instead switch to 'fucking kill'ing them with a motorised chair with wheels, which Microsoft will market it as the Zume.

Sadly, Steve's Zume runs on XP Embedded, so it's wheels spontaneously reverse when the OS decides to pull into a nearby pay-phone to call home and reassure Bill that it is truly "genuine".

The chair flips, throwing Steve to the ground where he lays on his back, dazed. Staring straight up, he mutters to himself "I've seen that screen before, but where's the fucking KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED message gone?"

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[atomicstrawberry]

Ever tried to listen to Ogg Vorbis on your iPod?

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[soft_guy]

Apple is generally quite open about allowing people to run whatever they want on the Hardware they sell

Oh, yeah? Well, try running Plan 9 OS on an Apple ///!

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[NinjaFarmer]

Steve's Zume will run on Vista Embedded, and thus require most of the power plant (i.e. engine) to power the 32 8 core processors distributed throughout the car and their related cooling systems.

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[schotter]

There's always iPodLinux...

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[unFKNreal]

Microsoft of course will then build their own version, stealing the innovations made in the others. After years of hype, concepts & testing, the cars finally hit the market to mixed reviews. The company will bitch about disappointing sales figures, as everyone would rather steal one than pay actual money. The thieves however are all caught due to the cars constant breaking down & crashing, making them useless when trying to evade police.

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[KDR_11k]

You know, their excessive data mining combined with this reducing the language to a single word does remind me of something...

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[IICV]

This Parking Lot is Full strip, perhaps?

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[hpcanswers]

The Microsoft car will crash for no apparent reason.

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[Sassinak]

I'm sure that left to their own devices, applie would probubly open up the codec structure to allow other non-DRM formats. But then they would have the RIAA all over their keisters blaming them for the loss of that penny last week at lunch.

To use the anonology above, the apple car would keep getting pulled over for DWB (Driving While Black) by the RIAA (police).

So whats the point of going through that if you don't have to. And if you can make a little more money along the way, why not.

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[John Nowak]

What? That's a long-running joke? I think you need a new social circle.

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[LordVader717]

Reminds me of this old joke I heard

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[mdwh2]

Apple is generally quite open about allowing people to run whatever they want on the Hardware they sell (their computers anyway, not their Consumer Electronics) Back in the power days, you could run MacOS or any of a number of variants of POWER Unix (Linux, BSD, etc) now you have the option of running OS X, BSD, Linux, or even Windows. The hardware isn't exactly closed in terms of what it can run.

Yeah, just like BeOS. It wasn't Apple's fault that BeOS wouldn't run on the new G3 machines, because open Apple were really open about the hardware.

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[swillden]

I'm sure that left to their own devices, applie would probubly open up the codec structure to allow other non-DRM formats. But then they would have the RIAA all over their keisters blaming them for the loss of that penny last week at lunch.

That makes no sense.

Apple already supports one non-DRM format (MP3), why would the record labels get mad at them for supporting another (Vorbis)?

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[glwtta]

iCar, which will be made out of translucent white plastic, but will only run certain fuels

Don't all cars only run on "certain" fuels? I mean, you can't really fill up your Honda with, let's say, coal or whale oil, now can you?

In any case, if they marketed the American iCar model as "iCarUS", I think it would sell quite well, definitely fits in with Apple philosophy :)

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[HadenT]

It doesn't play Ogg at 100% speed yet, however rockbox does.

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[jZnat]

Because record labels hate innovation and try to legislate it out of existence if it has anything to do with music.

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[Llywelyn]

AAC is also a non-DRM format, as are AIFF, WAV, and Apple Lossless.

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[swillden]

Because record labels hate innovation

And terrorists hate freedom.

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[CODiNE]

a motorised chair with wheels, which Microsoft will market it as the Zume.

I think more likely they'd call it a Zoom.

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[Red Pointy Tail]

Why so many?

Just one will do:

chair = new Object("MSCHAIR");
chair.throw();

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[Mr Z]

I didn't say to exist. I said to be successful. After all, imagine the network effects involved in a room full of developers instantiating and throwing chairs at each other?

Innovating

[kbsoftware]

I don't always agree with Google tactics but at least they are innovative. Certainly changing the internet, computers and now looks like cars and beyond. Microsoft which doesn't innovate just buys or steals will have a hard time competing with such a company. Since I don't see Google being any more evil then Microsoft, I have to cheer to Google since like I said at least they are innovating :) Yeah ok I did a crappy job of explaining the message I'm trying to get through.

Re:Innovating

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I don't always agree with Google tactics but at least they are innovative. Certainly changing the internet, computers and now looks like cars and beyond.

On the other hand, one could easily make the criticism that Google has lost focus and are all over the map, doing a lot of things and most them not anywhere near as well as they do web-searching. Perhaps this is a downside of having too much cash - they just don't have enough good ideas and talented people to make efficient use of all that money.

Re:Innovating

[squisher]

While I agree that Microsoft definately is not an inovator, and that they're pretty much evil, you are putting things wrong nonetheless:
First of all I don't see how the charity work of the company / company's founders has any impact on the company's operations, and secondly the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is the biggest one in the world - and they spend their money i.e. on aids related projects.
While there has been criticism that they are in fact getting too big / dominating the foundations, I'm sure they have good intentions with their work :-)

Re:Innovating

[phorm]

Their online auction and payment services have great potential. As for others, I'n not sure what potential they have for profit, but their picasa software I've found very useful and it seems to be quite popular as well. Google earth is fairly snazzy as well (with some advertising potential in terms of directory services, etc).

Re:Innovating

[BAM0027]

Google embodies innovation, applying that to whatever they can. I see them as continuing to be focused...on innovation, not ideas.

Re:Innovating

[cgenman]

Remember, Google requires their employees to spend one day a week on a pet project. A lot of things like Google Earth and Picasa come from these. Some of these have tremendous data value, like Orkut and Google Desktop. Some, like Picasa, may someday have tremendous data value but don't currently. But they're only hitting 1/5th of the engineer's time.

Valuable Google Assets: Alerts, Blogger, Desktop, Directory (DMOZ), Images, Maps, News, Toolbar, Web Search, Gmail, Mobile, SMS
Could be Valuable: Book Search, Catalogs, Checkout, Finance, Froogle, Local, Scholar, Video, Calendar, Groups, Talk, Translate
Silly, fun, useless to them: Earth, Picasa, SketchUp,

In the labs: Google Trends, Music Trends, Visually Impaired Search, Notebook, Mars, Page Creator, Public Transportation Maps, RSS Reader, Web Accelerator, Taxi Finder, Suggest, Froogle Mobile, Sets.

With the possible exception of Mars, that seems pretty interconnected. Some of the silliest ideas, like Google Maps, gMail, the Google Toolbar, etc have become standard usage now. Even the silly ones, like Google Earth, were part of their push to create 3D maps of all major US cities, which would have been a valuable resource if they could have pulled it off.

They're like the Bell Labs of the 'net. Lot of pure research, some of which is or might be stupidly profitable. But we'll all reap rewards in the end.

Re:Innovating

[harryman100]

Silly, fun, useless to them: Earth, Picasa, SketchUp

Silly and fun I agree with, but I don't they're useless to them. Scientifically, yes they probably are useless. But as a promotion tool, I think they probably work quite well. Particularly Google Earth, I've seen loads of people who think Google earth is really cool, the sort of people who would ordinarily use MSN search, because that's the one presented to them. People who don't really know what a search engine is. It's a popular way of showing that google isn't just "a search engine company", and encourage people to investigate their other offerings

Re:Innovating

[PietjeJantje]

All those services, a pity no one uses them, as search still accounts for most of their traffic. In other words, diversity failed so far and in almost no areas besides search are they king of the hill.

Besides that, 9/10 services you mentioned are not innovation. They are excellent buyers and copy-cats.

Re:Innovating

[bWareiWare.co.uk]

If your definition of "useless to them" is non-commercial, how about:

http://www.silicon.com/retailandleisure/0,38000118 42,39161922,00.htm

Whist I assume Goggle earth is haemorrhaging money at the moment, it certainly has potential.

Re:Innovating

[cgenman]

I know lots of people who use Alerts, Blogger, Desktop, Images, Maps, News, Toolbar, Gmail, Mobile, SMS, and Froogle. Lots of people at my company have desktop installed to facilitate searching e-mails, SMS is great when you're lost in a big city and need directions, Maps is a hell of a lot more usable than MapQuest, doing image searches is pretty common, GMail is ubiquitous now...

I don't know about your usage patterns, but there is a lot of traffic going to a lot of google services. If you want to define "King of the Hill," I'd hazard a guess that Google's on top in GMail, Image searches, automated alerts, SMS directions, Maps, and System Toolbars. And more importantly, a lot of this traffic is data collection to drive better search results, like the pilot free-wifi in the bay area.

I'll let others argue the loaded "innovation" monkier, but remember before Microsoft started spouting that word every other second it actually meant "did something similar to something else, but with a little twist."

Re:Innovating

[thesandtiger]

If google were fucking up at their core business - advertising - then yeah, I'd think that would be a valid criticism. But they aren't fucking up. Their advertising business is still going very well, and so I'd say that "lost focus" is not the case.

"Lost focus" is a term one would use if Google were stumbling. They're not, so clearly they haven't lost focus, and are simply expanding their periphery.

A great example of a company that "lost focus" would be Apple in the early to mid 90's. They were a company that focused on making things easier to use/"just work" but they had how many different models for users to choose from, with (to their target market) too many not-different differences etc. They lost focus, and they stumbled and staggered.

If Google were to do stuff like make their advertisements intrusive and irrelevant to the searches done and lose a lot of revenue over it, THEN one could say they lost focus.

Re:Innovating

[dabraun]

The "silly, fun, useless" Picasa and Google Earth were not developed in-house as part of the "pet project" system. Both of them were products build by other companies that were bought. Picasa was its own entity, Google Earth was build by Keyhole and had been available for several years before Google purchased it.

Re:Innovating

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

n the other hand, one could easily make the criticism that Google has lost focus and are all over the map, doing a lot of things and most them not anywhere near as well as they do web-searching. Perhaps this is a downside of having too much cash - they just don't have enough good ideas and talented people to make efficient use of all that money.

Actually, I find Google's diversity to be a brilliant move, worthy of some of the smartest minds on the planet. People are not machines. Forcing them to constantly focus on one task, without letting them change that task easily, does not result in optimal performance. How much time at work do people spend slacking? How much time is spent working slowly because people are tired or unmotivated or just not in the zone? At most places, a whole lot.

So Google encourages people to spend time on pet projects. Workers have something else to do at work and they get to choose what it is. Some of it is is really cool. Some of it is useless. A lot of it ends up as another, minor Google product, or a tool they use internally. All of it, however, is just bonus. The point is to keep their workers happy and attract the best workers. If they have $70K to fill a headcount slot they can get a lot more for their money than other places. Maybe they can get someone who can do the job twice as fast and is willing to work for that much money only because they get to work on pet projects among people who like to be there.

My company gets this concept. We don't compete only on salary, but also on working environment. Wear slashed up jeans and read Slashdot occasionally, so long as your job gets done. Have a Nerf gun fight to blow off steam and grab a beer or soda from the fridge, paid for by the company. Smart people know a $2 beer now and again is worth more to their happiness than another $10K in salary. Google has poached several very smart people from us now, because they get it too.

All these weird projects in random areas are not a lack of focus, they are a bonus that results from really smart management of employees. They don't have to be successful in the market because they have already worked, simply by being created and letting Google snag the cream of development field.

Re:Innovating

[Peter Mork]

Actually, that should read "Google allows their employees ..." As an employee, you are not required to avail yourself of this opportunity. Moreover, you have to clear the project with your manager. That said, it's a nice perk (unless you already spend your days working on your own pet projects ;-) ).

Re:Innovating

[kchrist]

And to take that a step further, I've heard the Google 20% time perk referred to, by a Google employee herself, as "mythical".

She didn't mean that it doesn't really exist, but rather that Google employees are frequently too busy with their regular work to be able to take advantage of it.

Like Omidyar Network?

[otisg]

I hope it turns out as good as it blurb makes it sound. I believe Pierre Omidyar's Omidyar Network was founded with the same/similar goals in mind.

Re:Like Omidyar Network?

[ClassMyAss]

With a name like "Omidyar Network," color me unsurprised that I've never heard of it before...

Google has name recognition and a good reputation. I foresee lots of support for this endeavor, and if they put as much effort into it as their words suggest they intend to, I think this will be a good thing for the world at large.

Re:Like Omidyar Network?

[alanlewis0]

Pierre Omidyar = guy who started eBay. Surely you've heard of it, no?

Beyond "don't be evil"

[timboc007]

I'm glad to see that Google is going beyond their "Don't be evil" motto to "Be good". I applaud their apparent sense of social responsibility.

I believe that much good can be achieved by large corporations who are willing to contribute to making the world a better place - whether it be through science for science's sake (e.g. Bell labs), welfare, world aid or whatever. I will be interested to see how this translates into a "for-profit" environment... presumably their profit margin expectations will not be as high as they might otherwise be?

Re:Beyond "don't be evil"

[anti-drew]

presumably their profit margin expectations will not be as high as they might otherwise be?

Their profit margin expectations may well be nil. It's merely that they are *allowed* to make a profit, not that they necessarily *will*.

Re:Beyond "don't be evil"

[rs79]

"Their profit margin expectations may well be nil. It's merely that they are *allowed* to make a profit, not that they necessarily *will*."

Uh, guys? You really don't have a fucking clue about this non-profit stuff do you? Thass ok most people don't.

Non-profits can make huge amount of profit. They just can't pay it out as dividends. So they pay it out in legal ways.

Non-profits are one of the biggests scams ans boondoggles of the 20th century.

Most non-profits SHOULD be for-profits for a number of reasons beyond the scope of this minor missive.

It's good to see the goog doing the right thing here. They're clever folk and are doing the right thing here.

Re:Beyond "don't be evil"

[asuffield]

I'm glad to see that Google is going beyond their "Don't be evil" motto to "Be good". I applaud their apparent sense of social responsibility.

I'm sorry, but this is a fundamental failure to comprehend the notion of "social responsibility". In fact, it's quite the opposite.

Social responsibility means thinking about the impacts of your actions and choosing your actions so that they are "good". What you're talking about is paying off karmic and/or publicity debts with "good" actions. It's the distinction between "he founded a charity to save starving children" and "he was a mass murderer, but he paid for a charity which saved more children than he killed, so he was a good person". You are attempting to classify Google using the second concept: that "good" actions in themselves are all that is required (so long as they outweigh bad ones). The concept of "social responsibility" would mean that you didn't do any of the "bad" actions in the first place, so there is no need to pay them off with "good" ones.

I know you didn't intend to extend the principle that far, but it's implicit: your assumption is that Google *needs* to do "good", non-business-related things in order to be a "good" company, which implies that their business-related actions are not "good". A "socially responsible" company would run their business in that manner and not need to found a charity for it. Google are therefore *not* a "socially responsible" company, they're a "regular company doing non-good things" that is trying to balance out their other actions. Financially there is no difference (stealing $10 from one person and then giving him a different $10 results in no net change), but ethically there is a difference (saving somebody's life and then stabbing him results in no net change, but that's not an excuse).

Re:Wow, the evil begins

[spoco2]

"And the largest disadvantage to a "for-profit charity?" Your donations are NOT tax deductible.

They've slit their own throats on this one."

Yeah, the people behind Google, the most successful web venture in the world, didn't give any thought at all as to the consequences of making it a for profit charity.

Have you perhaps thought that they are targetting other methods of funding that don't rely as much on the tax deduction angle? How about that they are planning on making products that can make money and therefore self fund the charity?

I highly applaud them, and I think the lack of needing to be non profit could be very liberating and free them up to do many things they otherwise may have not been able to.

Very excited to watch this one!

Re:Wow, the evil begins

[Odin_Tiger]

Somehow I suspect that Google won't be needing that many donations.

Plug-in means 100% electric if u don't drive much

[A*OnYourA**]

One of Google.org's first projects is the development of a plug-in hybrid vehicle that achieves a mileage rating equivalent to 100 MPG.

After seeing the movie 'Who Killed the Electric Car' I was so angry I swore I would never buy another car that doesn't run on electricity. Hopefully Google is going to save my ass so I don't have build it.

I Love Google.

Re:Wow, the evil begins

[larry bagina]

And the largest disadvantage to a "for-profit charity?" Your donations are NOT tax deductible.

You and I aren't going to be donating money, google.com is ($1 billion in seed money). Since google.org is a child company of google.com, their accountants and lawyers can futz with it to minimize any tax implications.

Re:Wow, the evil begins

[spoco2]

Doh, doh, doh... that will teach me for not using the preview button... stupid italics!

Hindu guru

[Psychotria]

From the article: (Brilliant)... has studied under a Hindu guru in a monastery at the foothills of the Himalayas

Anybody who can study with a guru sitting on them has my respect

Re:Hindu guru

[sd_diamond]

Anybody who can study with a guru sitting on them has my respect

Are you kidding? Those guys never eat.

Try it with a fried-chicken-eating Southern Baptist Minister; then you'll get my attention.

Re:Hindu guru

[dodobh]

It was in the Himalayas. Those mountains are steep, so the guru could easily be sitting above the student.

Re:Hindu guru

[mdielmann]

Ah, it's not that big a deal - most US Army backpacks weigh more than they do.

A plug-in hybrid

[davidwr]

Finally, a plug-in that works in every browser!

equivelent MPG

[taybin]

How does one determine what the equivelent hybrid/electric MPG is? I can think of two ways of comparing it to gasoline, but both of them are variable (cost and power), so I don't see how you could get a meaningful comparison.

Re:equivelent MPG

[Anonymous Coward]

A common system for evaluating advanced technology vehicle energy sources (hybrids, fuel cells, etc.) uses the "GREET" model developed by Argonne National Labs. This model considers the 'well-to-wheels' efficiency, which gives the most accurate picture of how a particular fuel or energy source is used. In the end, you get a measurement of miles per equivalent gallon of gasoline, or MPEGG.

http://www.transportation.anl.gov/software/GREET/i ndex.html

Re:equivelent MPG

[hazem]

Not being a physicist or even an engineer, my only guess is to come up with an new measure: miles per joule

A kilowatt-hour should have a standard number of joules in it as should a gallon of standard gasoline.

That would compare your engergy per mile.

Then figure out a cost per joule for each and you have a cost comparison.

As long as you state what you're measuring and you're comparing equivalent units, it shouldn't matter much.

Re:equivelent MPG

[knifey]

Well, off the top of my head, for a Hybrid car you'd measure how much pertolium it uses to go a certain distance.
I suspect you meant for Purely electric cars. For them you need to assign either a CO2 or equivalent cost to mains power, and rate that against petroleum. Then compare the energy use.
Generally both Hybrid and Electric cars do much better on economy due to the joys of regenerative braking and a few other "neat tricks".

Re:equivelent MPG

[Mr Z]

So far, I've seen two main methods of computing the fuel economy of a hybrid. The silliest one is the EPA method, which simply measures emissions and plugs them into a government mandated formula. This works for most traditional cars, but for hybrids it tends to overstate the fuel economy. The other accounts for the amount of gasoline and electricity from the grid used to power the vehicle. If you never plug your vehicle into an outlet, this is equivalent to dividing travel distance by number of gallons of gasoline. If you do plug your car in at night, it gets harder to calculate, since we don't typically burn gasoline to create electricity on the grid.

About the best you can do is compare emissions equivalence. Electric motors are zero-emissions at the point of use, but the coal plant on the edge of town will belch a little more if you're drawing from the grid. To find a useful ratio, you have to make assumptions about the particular mix of energy sources providing electricity to your home: Coal, natural gas, wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, etc. For specific regions that's doable, but for a nationwide scale you have to work with averages.

Given how cheap electricity is compared to many things, I suppose most people will just look at what they're paying at the pump, though.

--Joe

Re:equivelent MPG

[tuxicle]

That would be kilometers per joule. You guys would have miles per erg or something stranger.

Re:equivelent MPG

[chgros]

A kilowatt-hour should have a standard number of joules
1 kWh = 1000 Wh = 1000 W * 3600s = 3,600,000 J = 3.6 MJ

However for this kind of things it's useful to consider the inefficencies in distribution (e.g. does it 'cost' more to get a gallon of gasoline or the equivalent amount of electricity?)

Re:equivelent MPG

[AudioFile]

Let's not re-invent the wheel here - the GREET model (referenced previously by me, since registered) is the standard for calculating fuel economy for advanced or mixed-fuel vehicles. The problem, which MrZ touched on, is that electricity is tricky to account for and certainly depends on region (though a 'national average' metric exists). The traditional EPA methods MrZ referenced are based on standard US drivecycles that measure the amount of fuel used, and are certainly not relevant for plug-ins or EV's. CARB has been working on this issue, not sure what their current progress is.

In the case of plug-ins, electricity from the grid is the energy *carrier* and not the source. Comparing different carriers (electricity, hydrogen, etc) and different sources (coal, renewable, etc) requires the use of a fuel cycle model, and the GREET model is the popular one right now. Straight conversions on basis of chemical energy or stored on-vehicle electrical capacity don't do the issue justice. If we want to be responsible about our oil dependence and chose fuel efficient vehicles, the 'absolute' model (GREET) should be considered. And it yields some interesting results - primarily that plug-ins are a great solution in the absence of a functioning hydrogen infrastructure.

(To preempt responses from the hydrogen aware, hydrogen is considered a *carrier* and not source by many because, while it does occur naturally, the vast majority of commercial hydrogen currently comes from electrolysis or as byproduct from chemical reactions (refineries, industrial, etc.); we don't mine for it directly. In any case, a fuel cycle model is the best attempt to normalize these different energy pathways for plug-ins.)

For a quick primer on PI-HEVs and the fuel economy issue, take a look at this presentation (slide 9, 10) by Mark Duvall at EPRI which nails the issue on the head. If conflicts between what I said and what this presentation says exist, trust the presentation.

-Bill

Re:equivelent MPG

[Mr Z]

The Prius (which does not plug into the grid) is notorious for having a much higher EPA MPG rating than it achieves in real life. That's why I say it's silly.

Re:equivelent MPG

[Mr Z]

I didn't say hybrids were measured differently. I said that the in-the-lab tests tend to overstate a hybrid's fuel economy. Or at least did. My information is older than 2006. I saw several reports such as one mentioned in this article that indicated the EPA testing was dodgy for hybrid vehicles. From the article:

Data from Consumer Reports indicates that hybrid cars get less than 60 percent of EPA estimates while navigating city streets. In Consumer Reports' real-world driving test, the Civic Hybrid averaged 26 mpg in the city, while the Toyota Prius averaged 35 mpg, much less than their respective EPA estimates of 47 and 60 mpg. Hybrid cars performed much closer to EPA estimates in Consumer Reports' highway tests. Consumer Reports' senior auto test engineer Gabriel Shenhar says that while the EPA test is a lab simulation, Consumer Reports puts the cars on the streets and measures the fuel consumed to more accurately reflect gas mileage.

Is your 60MPG number from the onboard computer or from pencil and paper figuring? The article also points out that the Prius' onboard computer reports unreliable MPG figures.

--Joe

Re:equivelent MPG

[UbuntuDupe]

Electric motors are zero-emissions at the point of use, but the coal plant on the edge of town will belch a little more if you're drawing from the grid.

Yes, but that doesn't mean there's no potential environmental advantage. Think about it this way: if everyone drove a car with an electric motor, all of that coal could be burned in one central place (preferably, like, far away from anyone). Since it's all concentrated in one place, the pollution is far cheaper to clean up per mass-unit of pollutant. (For reasons I'm sure you can figure out.) And then there's no pollution in the major cities from motors. (And yes, I know it would be waste to do ALL of America on one plant because of distribution costs -- it's just the principle I'm getting at.)

The problem of course, is that if you explain to an environmentalist that this is what's actually going on, they'll suddenly be against it.

Re:equivelent MPG

[Mr Z]

Well, as someone else pointed out, and I agree, that coal plant doesn't necessarily need to be there forever. Personally, I get my electricity from Green Mountain Energy, so theoretically I wouldn't be adding as much to the load for the dirty coal-fired plants.

More important is getting clean plants onto the grid. Governor "Good Hair" Perry has fast-tracked 17 low-tech coal plants to get them past environmental review. I'd rather they look into coal gassification or other technology for new plants they bring on the grid.

--Joe

Re:equivelent MPG

[UbuntuDupe]

Yes, very true. My point was that even if you produced the energy for the electric aspect the same, there's still significant room for environmental improvement *if done properly*. And like you just said, you can further *supplement* this environmental savings by powering your car (at least partially) from even friendlier sources such as windmills. So people don't really appreciate the potential.

Re:equivelent MPG

[hyperventilate]

One can compare the energy in gas to the energy in electricity, but electric motors are more efficient.

Also Electricity is usually gathered (charged) at night where in most of the country it is a waste product.

Check http://calcars.org/ for the latest news in PHEV research and hacking. They have built a number of Plug In cars, including one over the weekend in front of an audience at the Orielly Maker Faire.

Re:Wow, the evil begins

[intangible]

Is it really worth trying to itemize for most people? The tax free part doesn't really come into play for me.

Re:Plug-in is inline with Google's existing vision

[larry bagina]

Actually, their founders use this, which gets 0.3 mpg.

Re:Plug-in is inline with Google's existing vision

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I know that Google employees receive a $5000 discount (plus a few other perks that I'm not clear on) on any purchase of a hybrid vehicle that gets 45 mpg (ie, Prius, Insight or Civic Hybrid).

Your statement implies that they only get the discount (really a employer subsidy) if the vehicle is a hybrid. If that's the case, it seems awfully short-sighted. Why not a conventional gasoline or diesel vehicle that also achieves at least 45mpg too? Is their goal to promote hybrids or to promote efficiency? Seems like promoting efficiency would be a better goal because it doesn't limit development to a single technology which may easily turn out to be a dead end.

Re:Plug-in is inline with Google's existing vision

[Mr Z]

That's one heck of a daily driver! I wonder what their weekend cars look like?

Joule-equivalent

[davidwr]

I think there's a standard "equivalent energy" formula that says 1 gallon of standard unleaded gasoline at a given temperature = xxx Joules of energy.

And of course one watt-second of electricity is 1 Joule.

Not much room to fudge those numbers.

As for cost, yes, that is variable. Then again, the "equivalent" of a gallon of gasoline last month at 95 degrees F and $3.00/gallon is not 1 gallon this month at 80 degrees F at $2.50/gallon. Cooler gasoline has more energy per gallon and cheaper gas is ligher on the wallet.

MPG?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought DivX was the norm these days

Same way they profit from everything else:

[mcc]

Targeted advertising.

Re:Can't wait

[chemisus]

They will sponser ads on rings of various sorts to imprint on the backhand.

Ethical investments

[Lars512]

Google are going to run into the same problems here that people already do when they try to go with ethical investment funds. At some level, you have to deal with the conflict between your goals of making a profit and investing ethically. At least in the case of these funds, it seems that unless you're willing to take a loss from time to time for the right cause(s), you can't claim to be investing ethically. The funds which behave less ethically will have more flexibility in where they put your money and will do better on the average.

They need to make a profit to be self-sustaining, right? There might be room for Google to do well here if there are other reasons why existing companies don't want to provide ethical products that would clearly be profitable. For a hypothetical example, if car companies and big oil together collaborated to avoid providing hybrid cars at a reasonable price for other business reasons. It seems strange that such market gaps wouldn't get filled by just any other big company though.

Re:Ethical investments

[spoco2]

The car initiative is what excites me most really. There is no good scientific/manufacturing reason that I know of that we can't be driving around in affordable hybrid/completely petrol devoid cars. It really does seem to be a reluctance based on the huge oil cartels.

So if Google, with its huge wealth, can kick start the availability of cars that are cheaper to run and far better for the environment, how can there not be a market?

I really hope they succeed... and then bring the success down under, as we need those cars here in Australia, hell, you could add some solar panels to help as we have an abundance of sun over here.

Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[caitsith01]

...this development, along with the Bill and Melinda foundation, means we now have extremely large, extremely rich companies doing what our governments should be doing.

If they're promoting cleaner vehicles or saving kittens it's all fine and dandy. But what about accountability? What if Google, with its billions, starts doing things that some of us strongly disagree with? Would Christian conservatives be happy if Google started a campaign to push condoms in schools and third world countries to help stop AIDS? Would progressives be happy if Google started a campaign to restore family values through aggressively marketing church youth groups?

Let's remember that this is the same Google which is arguably supporting the tyrannical Chinese government's censorship. Fundamentally, we should be asking, what is Google's agenda? What if we disagree with it?

I expect many people will be inclined to give me responses about it being an example of a company doing what it wants in a free market, and that it is still bound by the law. However, I say, TANSTAAFL, and I prefer my social engineering to be done by the government because in principle at least the government represents me and my interests, whatever my financial involvement.* Are we looking at a future where democracy is contingent on share ownership?

* yeah yeah, spare me

Google seems a bit like Apple around here at times, perhaps a little too far above reasonable criticism. A great many people seem to ignore the fact that it is a self-interested entity in a competitive market, and at the end of the day what it values is what's good for Google and not the good of all mankind. Even if you think this is great, I urge you to think about whether it's really a positive thing to have one company exerting so much influence over the information we receive (google.com), knowing so much about what we are interested in (google.com), what we talk about (gmail), where we go (google maps/earth), what we buy (Adwords, froogle), what we are creating (the emerging word processing software and related tools, Picasa), and apparently now, how we operate as a society.

Put it this way - if Google's board turned rabid tomorrow, how much damage could it do?

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[bishiraver]

Google.org does not blowback money to google.com, the search engine company.

The government should do a few main things:

-make sure other people don't take my stuff, my life, or impose upon my life in a negative way.
-protect my life and the sovereignty of my country.
-make sure its populace is well-educated and healthy
-deal with the people who cross the above two in a just manner.

In doing the above in a farsighted manner, it will maintain a good quality of life through protecting our nature reserves (if we don't have nature reserves, then arguably a future generation may indeed have a lower quality of life, lack of knowledge, and a higher death rate. Education and health may well be an extrapolation of 'protect my life.'

Of course, to do all of that a huge network of laws is written, several branches of government are created, and everything gets bogged down in beaurocracy - especially if morals are the key focus of politicians.

Google's involvement with the chinese government is actually a far cry better than any other search engine - when pages are censored, it tells the user that there were results that were censored. In a devious way, it does more to increase the knowledge of government censorship in China better than showing everything.

Google is doing things with google.org that a government shouldn't have to do. And you've seen what kind of bumbling the beaurocracy does when this kind of thing is involved.

Because google's company is knowledge based, it is not beholden to the same types of shareholders as, say, an oil company. This is well shown by their work on a hybrid-electric car. And because it has shareholders, instead of throwing money at problems like poor food and water quality in developing countries, it will work to fix the causitive issues. And with the brilliant minds they have there, I have no doubt this will be extremely successful.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[DeadChobi]

>...this development, along with the Bill and Melinda foundation, means we now
>have extremely large, extremely rich companies doing what our governments should
>be doing.

Finally, my dream of seeing a dragon run for president may be coming true! Dunkelzahn for President in 2056!

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[SnappyCrunch]

What you're describing is a situation that is functionally no different from a representative government, only you're voting with money instead of ballots.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[catbutt]

I have a hard time seeing how a corporation doing things with the intent of making a positive change is likely to cause more harm than a corporation doing things only for the purpose of enriching its shareholders.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Put it this way - if Google's board turned rabid tomorrow, how much damage could it do?

Far less damage than if Coca-Cola's board, GM's board, Virgin's board, and the boards several other companies that have established charitable arms turned rabid. For every /.er that loves Google without considering the alternatives is a /.er that hates Google without considering whom else to hate.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[j-pimp]

...this development, along with the Bill and Melinda foundation, means we now have extremely large, extremely rich companies doing what our governments should be doing.

I'm sorry, but the government just isn't doing that good of a job. Now I will spare you my libertarian rants, but basically, we have Bush giving alot of money to Christian groups that are against condoms for them to fight against AIDs, so if google or Microsoft starts giving comdoms to poor villages, we can see if the Microsoft village or the Christian village has less aids. If a council of village elders decides that condoms should be outlawed, they would have trouble facing pressure from either Google, or a liberal first world government.

As far as google being evil because of the Chinese, the US cooperates with them and the logic is similar.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[Anonymous Coward]

"...this development, along with the Bill and Melinda foundation, means we now have extremely large, extremely rich companies doing what our governments should be doing."

Actually, you have it completely backwards. This is exactly what private groups should do and the government should not.

But I believe we have a first principal mismatch. You want the government to do everything and do not trust the individual. I on the other hand don't want to the government doing anything and I trust the individual.

It reminds me of a conversation with a friend. He was going on and on about how he wished the government would tax him more so that the government could do good and give his money to those in need. Sadly, it never crossed his mind to give to private cherity. He, like you, worships government.

See, by having the freedom to choose which charities to give money to you can give to causes that you support. You are not forced to give to causes that the government forces you to give to under threat of imprisonment. Maybe you don't like the military, abortion, or perhaps welfare. The government doesn't give you a choice.

Why don't people know what true liberty is?

"Put it this way - if Google's board turned rabid tomorrow, how much damage could it do?"

Ask that about government. Government has a military and secret police forces.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[jerrold]

See, by having the freedom to choose which charities to give money to you can give to causes that you support. You are not forced to give to causes that the government forces you to give to under threat of imprisonment. Maybe you don't like the military, abortion, or perhaps welfare. The government doesn't give you a choice.

You do have a choice, it's called voting

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[eraserewind]

I have a hard time seeing how a corporation doing things with the intent of making a positive change is likely to cause more harm than a corporation doing things only for the purpose of enriching its shareholders.

Mr. Catbutt, somebody from The Road to Hell Paving Corporation is on the line, and would like a word with you.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[bateleur]

It reminds me of a conversation with a friend. He was going on and on about how he wished the government would tax him more so that the government could do good and give his money to those in need. Sadly, it never crossed his mind to give to private cherity.

Are you assuming this, or did you actually ask him?

Personally I think your friend has the right idea. Yes, he as one individual could choose to use the money to give to good causes. But what about those who choose not to do so? Superficially, we can use words like "liberty" to describe their freedom to do what they like with their money. But what's really going on is that people like your friend are choosing to pay for the things that need doing in the world and are, in effect, subsidising those who choose not to.

After however many thousand years, I think it's reasonable to give up on human nature changing very much any time soon. Taxes are what we have because, regrettably, some people are assholes who don't properly understand their moral responsibilities. The freedom to behave like an asshole is not anyone's right and is not a freedom I care to protect.

Indeed, my (cynical?) view would be that Google are doing this stuff because too many people are assholes and therefore no government ever has a democratic mandate to do the right thing. That's sad.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[Sassinak]

There is a quite a difference between a moralistic push (eg: condoms in school) vs. one that is economic that just happens to have environmental and some societal benefit. So lets not start that "If they do this, when does it end...." arguement.

For Profit-Charities have been a around a while, but most don't set them up because they lack some of the tax benefit that traditional "non-profit" charities offer. Plus they depend on grants and contributions of others for subsistance vs. a for profit charity can be run very much like a business, so long as its specific mission statement does not alter and has social benefit.

Another chunk of data to read: http://www.tgci.com/magazine/98winter/profit.asp

"For-Profit Charities

The recent Red Cross scandal is a reminder that charitable nonprofit organizations sometimes act poorly. Meanwhile, many for-profit commercial organizations try to do good--by helping poor coffee growers, or providing hurricane relief, or supporting schools. Yet the good-doing nonprofits enjoy tax benefits denied to the good-doing for-profits. Why should this be the case? It turns out that there is no reason for discriminating against commercial operations that provide charitable benefits. Indeed, the incentive structures of a profit-making business could be used to enhance the efficiency of charities. Hence the case for the "for-profit charity." Click here for the argument (an abstract of the paper is below).

Abstract:
Nonprofit firms may not distribute profits to owners but instead must retain them or reinvest them. Nonprofits that are "charitable organizations" under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code may receive donations from individuals who are allowed to deduct their donations from their income for tax purposes. We argue that the law should not link tax benefits to corporate form in this way. There may be good arguments for recognizing the nonprofit form and good arguments for providing tax subsidies to charities or donors to charities, but there is no good argument for making those tax subsidies available only to charities that adopt the nonprofit form. Consequently, the "for-profit charity" may well be a desirable institution. Currently, no such entity exists, but the reason is surely discriminatory tax treatment; the charitable activities of many commercial firms suggest that in the absence of discriminatory tax treatment for-profit charities would flourish. Current tax benefits for charitable nonprofits should be extended to for-profit charities, and to the charitable activities of for-profit commercial firms."
From: http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/misc_ideas/ index.html

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[fossa]

I prefer my social engineering to be done by the government because in principle at least the government represents me and my interests, whatever my financial involvement

And there's the rub. The government allows one to coerce another into paying for things he may not agree with. At least I can choose to stop using Google, and I can choose the charities to which I give money. I can hardly stop paying taxes.

Are you against all philanthropic organizations not government run?

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[mobby_6kl]

The government should do a few main things:

-make sure other people don't take my stuff, my life, or impose upon my life in a negative way.

And for that, they should take some of your stuff.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[IL-CSIXTY4]

After however many thousand years, I think it's reasonable to give up on human nature changing very much any time soon. Taxes are what we have because, regrettably, some people are assholes who don't properly understand their moral responsibilities. The freedom to behave like an asshole is not anyone's right and is not a freedom I care to protect. Stop trying to shove your morality down my throat. How can you act so high & mighty when you're taking from me to give to someone else at the point of a gun? I'm not a slave here to support the causes the party in power halfway across the country thinks are important. I have my own causes that I support, which are fighting every day for the government's attention because people like you think that's the way it's supposed to be. Yet Bush wants to give my money instead to religious institutions and pay for things likerabstinence programs, which I oppose. How is that moral?

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[caitsith01]

See, by having the freedom to choose which charities to give money to you can give to causes that you support. You are not forced to give to causes that the government forces you to give to under threat of imprisonment.

Precisely, and I know it's initially a confronting idea but that is precisely WHY the government SHOULD be the one distributing money. Those in most need are frequently the most marginalised and least popular or appealing groups. One function of government is to extend support and protection to such people (for example, the unemployed come to mind) specifically because individuals do not. Whereas an individual will play favourites one way or another, a government should not.

I can't remember who said it, but a society should be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable. Under your system, it is the most appealing who will be supported and protected, and many of the most vulnerable will be ignored.

Treating need as a competitive market is only something that could happen in the current era of rampant laissez-faire capitalism, where 'choice' in the sense of economic liberty is the only criterion for 'good.'

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[bateleur]

Endorsement of government taxation as a social mechanism does not imply approval of any particular government's spending or taxation policies.

For example (and getting back on topic) I'd like to see the present US administration doing more to encourage environmentally friendly transport.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[An Onerous Coward]

Unfortunately, at the moment, government plays favorites as well. Some disenfranchised groups have more difficulty than others when it comes to lobbying Congress and drumming up public support for their causes. Worse, none of them can bring the sort of clout to bear that 'industry' enjoys (with the possible exception of the AARP). Very often, the things the populace wants government to focus on have nothing to do with what is best for the country.

But I believe that the solution is to reform government, not to wash its hands of its responsibilities toward the poor before turning those responsibilities over to the private sector. We need more transparency in government. We need an electoral system that doesn't give incumbents a free pass. We need a Congress that doesn't police its own ethics violations. We need a voting system that allows people to display a preference for third party candidates without 'splitting the vote'. We need laws that force our congresscritters to engage more openly with the people they represent, and to be forthright about the potential conflicts of interest.

Beyond that, we need a citizenry that has the time and energy to engage in local civic affairs. For me, that's liberal codespeak for 'raising the minimum wage.' You can't be working two full-time, minimum wage jobs, and still have the time and energy to be an active participant in the democracy we aspire to having.

I think that, with such reforms in place, government really could become a tremendous force for social good, while minimizing the potential for tyranny.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[poot_rootbeer]

"You want the government to do everything and do not trust the individual."

You're extrapolating. That's not a fair conclusion to draw from a comment that opined that government should be more involved in technological and medical research.

"He was going on and on about how he wished the government would tax him more so that the government could do good and give his money to those in need."

I think you may have partially understood his point. It's not that he wished the government would take more of HIS money to do good, but that they would take more of EVERYBODY'S money to do good. Your point that private charity can be better targeted than taxation still stands, but you must acknowledge that by receiving funding from everyone, the government is able to provide support on a scale that private philanthropists simply cannot. Not only for the things that people WANT to support, but also for the things people NEED.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[Cappadonna]

"...this development, along with the Bill and Melinda foundation, means we now have extremely large, extremely rich companies doing what our governments should be doing."

My thoughts exactly. Instead of everyone lining up to go Lewinsky on Bill Gates and the Google Boys, the real question that should be "Why devil isn't our government doing this?" Charity is meant to supplement and not supplant a modern western government, particularly the richest Western Government on Earth. I remember Fortune and Forbes praising Wal Mart (Yes, the billion dollar box store to damn cheap to pay for basic health insurance for its employees or pay sweatshop workers more than $5/week) and its work after Katrina. Uhm, okay, whatever. I mean, do we really want to rely on the same class of people responsible for Microsoft ME and the Enron Scandal to cleaning up social problems? Not that government's any better, but you can atleast (in theory) demand someone's head in a Government. Corporation, OTOH, only have to answer to share holders and their investors.

Though I don't percieve the Google guys or Bill Gates as evil incarnate, this is an eerie encroachment of corporations taking over the role that governments and politicians should be handling. Before we all start (mis)quoting John Adams, lets not forget the people in Africa are dying diarrhea b/c someone like Coca-Cola or Pepsi control the water supply. If you don't have a few mill to splurge on tech stock. You are SOL. Lets not forget that back at the turn of the century, insurance companies and not the government ran the fire department. Whole sections of New York City and Chicago would burn in infernos because Fireman weren't obligate to put out blazes for anyone who didn't have the insurance medallions. It didn't work then and it will be an even bigger mess now.

And if you're response is, "Well, our government isn't doing it.", my response is that if you didn't vote, actively get involved in the political process beyond the typical Slashdotter's (often half-informed) bitch fess or simply get involved in the local government then you got what you deserve. Election time is coming around soon. So if you're sick entire of the Replubicrats screwing things up, just vote the Green Party, Working Family party, reform party, conservative party or the Libertarian on general principle. Read up on candidates and find out if you can give with their overall principles -- or even better, screw the two party system and find out about third parties that actually believe what you do. And in 2007, get a few friends together and run for local office. I'm sure you're local school board or town council could use a few independent minded nerds to call them out on their bull.

Think about it -- isn't solving social ills and protecting us from natural disasters and war are what we have elected officials for in the first place? It shouldn't take Google to push for more fuel effiecent cars, Kellog, Brown & Root to run the army, Hugo Chavez to provide heating oil for poor people in the Bronx or Bill Gates to put decent desktops in inner city high schools.

Don't get me wrong, the Google guys have made ballsy move-- investing their dough in actually helping mankind (instead mansions and basketball teams). They seem to have their hearts in the right place. But as mentioned, what if these guys croaked and replaced by some real money grubbers? If we just surrender our social responsibility to these for profit "foundations" we are in deep do-do.

Lets not forget that corporation in the end, are no better than dope dealers and gangsters -- their only concern is the bottom line. Also, lets not our elected leaders (whose salaries and healthcare we pay for in taxes), get off the hook for not doing their jobs. Election Day is coming up soon. So get up, get informed (beyond Cable News and the NYT), bitch less and act more.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[po_boy]

we now have extremely large, extremely rich companies doing what our governments should be doing.

I must have missed the clauses in the constitution that direct the federal government to do such things as eliminate disease in foreign countries or to research and develop automobiles. These are precisely the kinds of things that private organizations are better at than the federal government.

It does seem to be a bit outside the realm of Google's circle of competence, though. I wonder if it comes as a surprise to many shareholders who have invested in Google.

What if we disagree with it?

Quit investing in the company and quit using their services. You don't even need to renounce your citizenship or leave your country to do that!

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[leoPetr]

There's a difference between trusting the individual and thinking that the individual is an omniscient, all-wise, perfectly rational god. I trust the individual to have fun in their bedroom. I do not trust the individual to know what needs there are, or what other people are already doing, or to be consistent in their inclinations for charity. For some things, you need a centralized organization. And when people join together in an organization to do something, they are replicating the structure of an organization that their ancestors joined together to form -- their government.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[mre5565]

...this development, along with the Bill and Melinda foundation, means we now have extremely large, extremely rich companies doing what our governments should be doing.

On the contrary, this is exactly what the rich should be doing; a tradition older than Rockefeller and Carnegie. Name one gov't university better than CMU or Stanford, to name a couple founded by rich capitalists? (In fairness, I suspect the 3 military academies do a better job of teach military strategy and maybe aviation than CMU or Stanford.)

Would Christian conservatives be happy if Google started a campaign to push condoms in schools and third world countries to help stop AIDS?

Isn't this pretty much what Bill and Melinda Gates, as well as George Soros do? In any case, it is their money, and if it is legal to spend it that way, X'tian conservatives can't do much about it, other than try to have school boards and third world leaders elected out of office. That is the accountability. The difference here is that Google.org might find a way to make money pusing condoms (e.g. by selling advertising on free condoms). If Google.org can do that, this frees the Gates family and Soros to give to other causes.

Let's remember that this is the same Google which is arguably supporting the tyrannical Chinese government's censorship. Fundamentally, we should be asking, what is Google's agenda? What if we disagree with it?

It isn't your money, unless you own shares of GOOG. As long as it is legal, your disagreement is immaterial. You can sell your shares of GOOG and stop using their search engine (and there are alternatives; I'm finding google.com produces too much spam, and less famous engines are less vulnerable) if Google bothers you.

I prefer my social engineering to be done by the government because in principle at least the government represents me and my interests.

Well in the USA at least, the majority year in and year out elects governments that don't include the amount of social engineering you want in their party platforms. I do not want the US government engaging in that degree of social engineering, especially considering that gov't social engineering can make things worse. Having corporations compete to do good and try to make a buck at it, strikes me as a more efficient and reliable way to determine the social engineering that works.

I urge you to think about whether it's really a positive thing to have one company exerting so much influence over the information we receive (google.com), knowing so much about what we are interested in (google.com), what we talk about (gmail), where we go (google maps/earth), what we buy (Adwords, froogle), what we are creating (the emerging word processing software and related tools, Picasa), and apparently now, how we operate as a society.

I don't worry because Yahoo and Microsoft provide viable, and in some cases, superior alternatives. Of that list, the only thing from Google that is indispensible (to me), is google earth.

Similar whining was uttered about Microsoft 10 years ago. How silly that looks today.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[mre5565]

The government should do a few main things:

-make sure other people don't take my stuff, my life, or impose upon my life in a negative way.
-protect my life and the sovereignty of my country.
-make sure its populace is well-educated and healthy
-deal with the people who cross the above two in a just manner.

Well you are 3 for 4, but a very good post otherwise.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[Mr2001]

It reminds me of a conversation with a friend. He was going on and on about how he wished the government would tax him more so that the government could do good and give his money to those in need. Sadly, it never crossed his mind to give to private cherity. He, like you, worships government.

What a strange thing for you to say. Surely you didn't think he only wanted the government to tax him more, passing over everyone else, did you?

Let's suppose your friend can only spend, oh, one dollar a year on charity. One dollar a year is going to do approximately nothing at all for anyone who needs help; he might as well burn that dollar bill to keep a homeless person warm for two minutes in the winter. But one dollar a year times 150 million taxpayers is 150 million dollars: that will go a long way, and it can be raised without putting a large burden on anyone.

See, by having the freedom to choose which charities to give money to you can give to causes that you support. You are not forced to give to causes that the government forces you to give to under threat of imprisonment.

That's exactly why government can solve some problems more effectively.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[Shadowlore]

...this development, along with the Bill and Melinda foundation, means we now have extremely large, extremely rich companies doing what our governments should be doing.

No it means we've finally got back around to big businesses doing what governments CAN NOT do successfully. The government is good at very few things: primarily killing other governments' armies. Clearly they are not that good at observing our rights, though they are good at polluting (single largest contributor to pollution is the government). some government even spend time and money putting speakers on big briotehr cameras to stop crime by telling people "I'm watching you" and so forth instead of doing what it really takes to stop the crime.

This isn't new, big business has done these things in the past. But now since it's Google or Gates we hear about it like it's the next big thing.
http://philanthropy.com/free/articles/v18/i17/1700 1003.htm is about some o the recent reports. Direct corporate philanthropy last year topped 20 billion dollars.

If they're promoting cleaner vehicles or saving kittens it's all fine and dandy. But what about accountability? What if Google, with its billions, starts doing things that some of us strongly disagree with? Would Christian conservatives be happy if Google started a campaign to push condoms in schools and third world countries to help stop AIDS? Would progressives be happy if Google started a campaign to restore family values through aggressively marketing church youth groups?

Boycotts, media exposure, voting with your dollars. All of which are more effective than when the government does such things. What do you do when the government does these things? Whine a bit, and a few weeks or months later the government continues doing it as normal. The next election the same bozos are re-elected.

It isn't like you can go out and set up a new government as easily as starting a company to compete with Google.

Put it this way - if Google's board turned rabid tomorrow, how much damage could it do?

Not as much as you'd think.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[newhoggy]

See, by having the freedom to choose which charities to give money to you can give to causes that you support.

This sort of system has horrible distortionary effects. Tsuanmi relief and conservation of fluffy cute animals get the bulk of the donations because it is easy to convince people to donate to these causes while poverty in third world nations and conservation of ugly creatures get pennies.

Important causes will get neglected as popular causes suck all the money up.

Re:Plug-in is inline with Google's existing vision

[dago]

Well, to be even more complete, one could also say that traditionnal car manufacturers already have diesel cars that go under 4 l/100km (over 58 mpg). Volkwagen already sold cars that could go down to 3 l/100km (or over 78 mpg).

Ok, that's not in the US, and you still need particle filters, but still, I also think that limiting the options is a bad idea.

Re:Isnt "for profit charity" an oxymoron?

[__aaclcg7560]

Sounds like Google pretending to be a for-profit charity when it really should be an investment bank. As soon as people's heads stop exploding over the concept of a for-profit charity, I'm sure the financial paperwork will be picked over most throughly.

Doubt it

[XanC]

Given how cheap electricity is compared to many things, I suppose most people will just look at what they're paying at the pump, though.

We're talking about a lot of electricity.

Re:Plug-in is inline with Google's existing vision

[ross.w]

Do they subsidise the replacement lithium ion battery as well? There are going to be a lot of Priuses going cheap in a few years because of the cost of replacing the battery.

One billion dollars for FOSS

[wysiwia]

Can you imagine what one billion dollars would achieve if spent for FOSS? Can you imagine a world where any standard software is free of charge for any kind of computer. Can you imagine a world where even specialised software doesn't cost more a $100? Can you picture how one billion dollars could change the world if spent for FOSS?

O. Wyss

Re:One billion dollars for FOSS

[raehl]

Can you imagine what one billion dollars would achieve if spent for FOSS?

Not much. A billion dollars SOUNDS like a lot, but it really isn't. 1 billion dollars would get you 100 million dollars to work with a year if invested well. 100 million dollars a year is enough to pay maybe 1,000 people a year. That may be enough for a handful of large-scale projects, but it's not world-changing.

Re:One billion dollars for FOSS

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine what one billion dollars would achieve if spent for FOSS?

25 clones of Tetris
24 C standard libraries
23 stupid desktop widgets
22 pointless window managers
21 HTTP servers
20 Wiki web applications
19 useless shells
18 password crackers
17... Eh, you get the point: Take Freshmeat's frontpage and extrapolate, and that's at best! What you'd probably get is a bunch of people demanding 55 grand a year to work on utterly useless crap.

Re:One billion dollars for FOSS

[Christianfreak]

I certainly hope that specialized software doesn't cost just $100 because then there would be no reason for people like me to develop it (since that's what my company does). I love FOSS but face it, there simply isn't a FOSS solution for everything. FOSS is great for commodity software like operating systems and office suites but not so great for specialized things. FOSS is about scratching an itch or becoming popular. Developing specialized software HAS to be about listening to the (few) "customers". As a business owner, I'm certainly not going to waste time with a half solution for anything because in the long run it costs me more money than if I had just developed (or paid to have developed) the real solution I need. That's almost always going to cost me more than $100. I think most businesses are going to be pretty similar in that regard.

Fortunately I don't think any huge influx of money is going to cause masses of people to switch. There is likely more than $1bn collectively in FOSS already and it hasn't really made much difference.

Re:One billion dollars for FOSS

[LunarCrisis]

Barring the possibility of failed sarcasm. . .

That's why they would be careful with exactly who they accept, just like they do with their Summer of Code.

Re:One billion dollars for FOSS

[wysiwia]

Can you imagine what one billion dollars would achieve if spent for FOSS?

25 clones of Tetris ...
17... Eh, you get the point: Take Freshmeat's frontpage and extrapolate, and that's at best! What you'd probably get is a bunch of people demanding 55 grand a year to work on utterly useless crap.

Sure if you just pour this billion onto everybody's head. But if the FOSS projects are carefully chosen and a clear vision is followed such crap could be easily avoided. Besides a billion is so much money it wouldn't matter if some crap is also gotten. E.g. a rough estimate of about 10 million would allow to make my vision of cross-platform FOSS and CSS (http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html become true. Of course this doesn't change the world but would certainly have an incredible impact on the quality of software in general.

O. Wyss

Re:One billion dollars for FOSS

[Eivind Eklund]

As an OSS developer, I can say that 1 billion dollar would make fairly little difference, and might make a negative difference. People seem to believe that open source software would be tremendously helped by money. I've worked with a very large open source project (FreeBSD), and have seen how we fairly often have had problems with spending money. Anyway, before, we had the problem of vetting the people that worked on things. We tried just hiring people to do a project for us a few times, and got so-so results in many of the cases. Fortunately, we also had a lot of people that worked as consultants and did FreeBSD stuff in their spare time. So we tried paying one of those to spend more of his time on FreeBSD.

Oops. Bad plan. We got a time disparity: He had lots of time for FreeBSD, and the volunteers didn't have time to catch up...

We seem to have learned a bunch about how to spend money since - there's been pushed some amounts of money through the project (many scales down from a billion dollars, though) and it doesn't seem to mess thing up. However, we spent years learning how to do that, and there's still clear limits on how much money we would be able to spend positively. I suspect Google understands this. Through their Summer of Code projects they seem to be pushing about the right amount of money that open source can gracefully accept. Pushing another billion dollar into the open source economy in a sudden fashion would in my opinion most likely destroy large parts of the Open Source world.

Eivind.

Re:One billion dollars for FOSS

[Ginger Unicorn]

FOSS is about scratching an itch or becoming popular.

that was true 10 years ago. i dont think IBM, MySQL or Google are trying to demonstrate their 1337 skillz or just killing time in their parent's basement.

the only way specialised software would cost $100 is if it only took less than a day to write. if it were GPL'd or not would be irrelevant.

i'm sure there's a hell of a lot of money invested in FOSS so far, as you say, but to say it hasnt made much difference is just wrong. Thanks to investment from companies like IBM, Linux is capable of scaling to hundreds and thousands of processor SMP systems in the server market, and investment from people like Canonical are bringing the integration and polish of systems based on Gnome and KDE near to the critical tipping point where windows users are comfortable using them.

You're absolutely right, there isnt a FOSS solution for everything, but $1bn dollars invested in a focussed and targeted manner could generate a hell of lot more of the missing solutions.

Re:One billion dollars for FOSS

[T-Ranger]

Well, it clearly depends on the project and where the money would go. It may be related to how easy/obvious/straight-forward the project is. An OS should falls into this "easy" category. Easy in the sense that one can take courses in writing OSs, and it least in theroy any CS undergrad should be able to contribute to an OS. Thousands of OSs have been written, there is a plethora of information, documentation, and skill available in doing so. While the state-of-the-art may be moving just as fast anywhere, good-enough / tuned-for-reality products are, well, good-enough. There are established benchmarks for measuring quality. Technology wise, the right thing is usualy clear. (Consider the lack of microkernels in the real world, and the ongoing popularity of UNIX-ish things and even MVS)

Now consider web browsers. You can't take a course in writing a web browser; there has probabaly been less then 500 independent ones ever written with perhaps only 10 realy significant lines of development. Mozilla is extreemly complex, and maintaining a level of understanding of some of the core code simply requires a high commitement of time. There is little low hanging fruit for newbies to pick up. Technology wise, the right thing is almost never clear.

FreeBSD works, according to you, fine (or better) with no paid developers. The Linux kernel isnt developed by unpaid geeks in basements, but mainly by paid profesionals. But pros paid by independent companies with no gaurentee of loyalty to the "Linux kernel" so, from a management perspective, are volunteers. Both FreeBSD and Linux move forward because forward is usualy obvious.

The core of Mozilla moves forward under the power of Mozilla.org staff, under the direction and control of Mozilla.org managers. Even if you could find 20 volunteers who have the time and inclination to hack on the code, they would have 25 ideas where the code should go, Perhaps there are still 25 ideas with the 20 staff of m.o (or whatever the numbers are), but at least at anyone time the managers are controling them down to only 10 directions. They are working on 10 directions because they are getting paid, and they are working on them for 35hrs a week, because they are getting paid.

OO.o is even more complex then Mozilla. It has even fewer non-Sun (or Novell) employees hacking on it.

Part of this is neither technical or manageral, but culture. FreeBSD and Linux have a history of (~paid) volunteers, Moz and OO.o from paid staff.

Google could help Mozilla and OO.o by throwing money at them. Not so much for *BSD and the Linux Kernel.

And there are less technical things that throwing money at would help. Stupid things like icon sets for Gnome. Less stupid things like useability studdies. The former may happen with volunteers, the later definitly needs money.

Standards. w3c is a hugely fucked up. OpenDocument has enemies with big pockets. Moeny pays lawyers and marketing types. Yes, it was volunteers who got a Firefox add in the New York Times, but it the volunteering consisted of the time it took to give a CC number ;-)

Re:One billion dollars for FOSS

[Eivind Eklund]

According to what I know and what mozilla.org claims, they mainly coordinate volunteers now. The staff was laid off.

OpenOffice is still fed by Sun, and I suspect that is holding it back.

Also, I didn't claim that there were nobody that got paid for time spent on the FreeBSD kernel - there is, I've gotten money to spend time on it myself. Just that feeding more money into the process is/was difficult.

I believe there will be similar problems with a bunch of other projects - because organizing money is hard, and organizing money to help open source is even more difficult.

Eivind.

Re:One billion dollars for FOSS

[2short]

"Can you imagine what one billion dollars would achieve if spent for FOSS?"

Yes. I imagine it would achieve far less than you think.

"Can you imagine a world where any standard software is free of charge for any kind of computer."

Yes, I live in such a world. Well, maybe not the "any kind of computer" part, but all the kinds I have, so same difference. It seldom even occurs to me to pay for software I consider at all "standard".

"Can you imagine a world where even specialised software doesn't cost more a $100?"

No. I write very specialized software for a living. Given a small number of potential users, there is a minimum price per user that will pay me enough to write that software. There certainly exists software specialized enough that that minimum price is above $100.

"Can you picture how one billion dollars could change the world if spent for FOSS?"

I'd imagine many, many times this is spent yearly on FOSS development in any case. A billion is a lot of money, but not as much as you seem to think.

As long as we're playing the what-if game...

[Anonymous Coward]

What if giant space monsters come and eat us? You have no idea how much power we're giving them by not believing in them and not creating giant space weapons to combat their eventual arrival.

But then what if someone on earth uses those giant space weapons to take over the earth? We should preemptively kill everyone so that can't happen. It's better than being eaten by space aliens, don't you think?

My car will get negative 100Mpg

[goombah99]

I'm developing a car that will get negative 100MPG to cancel this out.

Actually I'm trying to cancel out this goofy definition of MPG when there's electricity involved. Does a pure electric car get Infinity Miles per gallon?

This sort of reminds me of a prank a friend pulled in college. One guy was always entering the room to announce he had managed to drive is economy car so skillfully that got outrageous gas milage. Tiring of this, my friend started adding a gallon of gas to the braggarts tank every night so that his milage and brags got bigger and bigger. Then the next week he started siphoning out a gallon out of the tank. The brags "mysteriously" ceased without explanation.

So my car is going to use photovoltaics, and have an onboard device that inhales smog, and uses the electricity to produce gasoline. Then I'm going to drive up to gas stations, connect the hose and pump gas back into the filling station tanks. That will mess with their arithmetic! and I'll have my negative 100MPG vehicle.

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[fo0bar]

Actually I'm trying to cancel out this goofy definition of MPG when there's electricity involved. Does a pure electric car get Infinity Miles per gallon?

Yes, it does, considering there is no gas involved.

I don't understand what you think is "goofy" about this. I put 10 gallons of gas into my Prius, I get 500 miles out of those 10 gallons. Hence, 50MPG. The fact that there is an electrical aspect is irrelevant.

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[MadUndergrad]

The hybrid still gets all its power from the gasoline. When you start plugging it into the wall (as is the case with these "100MPG hybrids") it stops being entirely a question of efficiency and starts becoming one of battery capacity. That's why the definition in this case is goofy.

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[ColaMan]

He's talking about the plug-in hybrids... I suppose you could convert the cost of the electricity into how much gas that would buy and go from there.

eg: You use $1.20 of electricity to charge your electric-only car up. Gas costs $2.40/gal. You have bought the equivalent of 1/2 gal of gas. You drive 100 miles before recharging, thus you've reached the equivalent of 200MPG.

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[zaphod_es]

Great prank, but it'd be a very expensive one nowadays ;)

Not if you reverse the starting order :)

Then the next week he started siphoning out a gallon out of the tank.

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[harryman100]

I'm developing a car that will get negative 100MPG to cancel this out.

Ahh, the american way!

/ducks

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[mdpye]

eg: You use $1.20 of electricity to charge your electric-only car up. Gas costs $2.40/gal. You have bought the equivalent of 1/2 gal of gas. You drive 100 miles before recharging, thus you've reached the equivalent of 200MPG.

Surely, given the reasons for moving to these cars in the first place it should be the environmental cost in terms of pollutants released to travel the distance which we use for the comparison? After all, if people gave the slightest fuck about the cost of running the vehicle* then >99% wouldn't drive gas guzzling tanks like they do, no?

Economic cost is relatively unomportant, we are well aware the destroying the planet is cheap in short term economic terms...

*. Aside from as an excuse not to move to something more environmentally friendly...

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[iainl]

People do give the slightest fuck about how much driving costs. But if you want to use that to help the environment, consider how much they spend on the extra fuel vs. how much a whole new, fuel-efficient car is, in both fuel costs and indeed pollution damage of some fuel vs. manufacture of a new car. Remember, this is about the environment, so their old gas-guzzler has to come right off the road, rather than just passed on to another driver.

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[14CharUsername]

Wouldn't it be easier to get -100MPG by driving around in reverse?

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[Twinbee]

Perhaps this is why we should simply change the system to miles per dollar. This would cover any technology, past and present.

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[goombah99]

And if I drove in reverse and pumped back too, I'd get positive 100MPG :-)

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[Flimzy]

I don't understand what you think is "goofy" about this. I put 10 gallons of gas into my Prius, I get 500 miles out of those 10 gallons. Hence, 50MPG. The fact that there is an electrical aspect is irrelevant.

That's simply not true. In your example, you do get 50mpg, because the eletricity you use to achieve 50mpg is generated by the gasoline in your tank.

If you plug your car in at home, then you are using an external fuel source (the electric outlet, which in turn is powered by some other fuel--perhaps fossil fuel, perhaps wind, perhaps nuclear, whatever).

Using your logic, I could put 5 gallons of gasoline a friend gave me into my tank along with 5 gallons I paid for, then drive 500 miles, and get 100mpg, because I only _paid_ for 5 gallons of gasoline.

Using that logic, I get 228mpg in my car! My car runs on vegitable oil I get for free that I mix with other agents... On friday, I put 10 gallons of free veg oil in my tank, along with 2 gallons of other fuel. 12 gallons of fuel @ 38mpg = 456 miles. 456 miles / 2 gallons paid for = 228 mpg. Wow! And I didn't even have to pay for fancy batteries!

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[blugu64]

Acutally you would need to use miles per inflation adjusted dollar to cover the future and past.

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[Shadowlore]

Actually I'm trying to cancel out this goofy definition of MPG when there's electricity involved. Does a pure electric car get Infinity Miles per gallon?

The electricity does not just pop into the car from nowhere. The Prius uses electricity but still has an MPG rating. Because it uses gasoline.

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[doodlelogic]

yeah but mate you can get 50mpg out of a perfectly ordinary car to if it isn't hulking a heavy battery round with it...

Re:Isnt "for profit charity" an oxymoron?

[drDugan]

It is more than an oxymoron - it is a complete contradiction. Heads exploding? People should be standing up and clearly stating that this is hype and PR to make google look good as they collect all the really valuble information that we don't really want to give them, but we do because tghey have such nice free online toys.

Google already has significant backlash, this is thinly veiled move to stem the inevitable tide of public opinion against them as they continue to grow and control the world's information.

Google! Fuck Yeah!

[DaMouse404]

Coming again to save the motherfucking day yeah! -DaMouse

Don't need ethics, just money

[Shihar]

They need to make a profit to be self-sustaining, right? There might be room for Google to do well here if there are other reasons why existing companies don't want to provide ethical products that would clearly be profitable. For a hypothetical example, if car companies and big oil together collaborated to avoid providing hybrid cars at a reasonable price for other business reasons. It seems strange that such market gaps wouldn't get filled by just any other big company though.

I think you miss the point of a for profit charity. What running for profit does is cut the strings. When you are running a non-prof you need to meet some strict regulations. These regulations dramatically restrict where you can put your money. The idea behind a for-profit charity is that your strings are cut and you can do whatever innovative investing / R&D you want.

As to how they stay "for profit", that is easy. They don't. Well, they DO, but they do not have to do it by turning a profit on investments. Google (the for profit corporation) is going to donate money one way or another. It can either donate to various non-profs or it can take some of that money and donate to themselves. They will probably do both.

The idea is this; Google is going to dump money on charity for whatever reasons (image improvement, customer relations, whatever). Google now dumps some of their money on their own charity. From the charities perspective, even if they never return a dime they are "making a profit" off of the money Google is giving them. The charities numbers are all in the black from the "income" Google provides. As an added bonus, if charity does end up investing in a winner, the charity will now suddenly be flush with cash. The charity will certainly try and invest in winners, but picking winners doesn't have to be their preoccupation so long as Google keeps giving them money as "income".

Everybody here misses the point ...

[take5]

A normal corporation's purpose is to make money for its
shareholders.

What Google is proposing, is a corporation whose purpose is to
make contributions to the society.

This is a totally new concept about what to do with wealth
accumulation. It solves a real problem of capitalism, the
concntration of wealth to a small number of individuals who
do not need it, but rather are addicted to accumulation.

Our greed driven economy is a dead end, and Google
offers an innovative solution.

Re:Homework not done and it shows.

[Technician]

FYI, the Prius does not use a Lithium battery.

For long battery life, they do a lot of battery management to make the battery last the life of the car.

For starters they do not treat the battery the same way you would treat a cell phone or laptop battery. Full charge then deep discharge cycles are not done. The battery is rarely charged to 100% and almost never discharged below 50%.

There are Prius cars out there with over 250K miles and still going strong on the original battery. Do some online research on the rate of Prius battery failures. Most battery failures are not the HV traction pack but the 12V cabin battery.

Cell phones and laptops are often charged fully and run down below 50% for long battery run-time. This kills batteries. Cell phone and laptop batteries life is not expected to last more than a couple years. The Prius battery on the other hand is expected to last the life of the car. The plug in mod may change the expected battery life considerably.

No, it is a tax classification

[Shihar]

Basically, if you declare yourself a non-profit company you get your ball shackled by the federal government in return for them not taking taxes. A non-prof has a dramatically restricted ability invest in other companies and needs follow a pile of regulations. They also are limited in whose money they can take, where they can put that money, and how much of it they can move and how much of it they can save.

By declaring themselves a for-profit charity the regulatory burden is dramatically reduced. So, when they declare themselves a 'for profit' charity, they are basically declaring they would rather taxed then live by the regulations that federal government imposes on non-profit charities.

This move does not really surprise me. Google has made itself by being more agile and quicker to adapt then its competitors. If they are going to try something innovative in the world of philanthropy, they are probably going to go for a unique model that doesn't conform well to current non-prof charity regulations.

"DOUBLESPEAK!!1111!!!" for no red tape

[Shihar]

I have founded and run non-profit entities, and guess what - it is hard, even when you have money. Oversight, restrictions, tax headaches, reporting, etc. You have to actually do things that really help the public and not the owners.

You answer your own objections. If you declare yourself a non-prof you run into (by your own words) "oversight, restrictions, tax headaches, reporting, etc." That is clearly what they are trying to avoid. Non-profit is a tax classification. They don't want to be under that classification. They don't want to be forced to spend X% of their donations and be prevented from investing X% into other things. That is what being a non-profit does. The non-profit classification works great for some things and it does make sure that people who declare this tax-exempt status really are doing something. Google has said that they want to try something that doesn't pigeon hole into what the IRS and government regulators think a charity should be spending and investing. If Google wants to avoid following government regulations, then they MUST declare their charity a for-profit charity and pay taxes.

Besides, what is the worst that can happen? Google makes some investments that you disagree with? If that keeps you from sleeping at night don't take a walk down Wall Street or else your head will explode. Even if it is an utter failure it just means that there is one more investment firm investing in things I disagree with. At best, Google breaks out of the mold of charities, does something innovative, and brings something good to all of our lives. So at worst it is more of the same old, and at best peoples' lives are changed for the better.

Maybe half the reason why corporations can be so tight fisted with giving their money to charity is because every time they try and do something good with it hoping to get an ounce of good will, some jack ass gets up on a soap box and starts screaming into the wind about the evil corporations donating to fight hunger so that they have more orphan babies to eat. Maybe you should save your soap box for when they actually do something wrong.

Wait... what?!

[TheSeer2]

Google.org has existed for a very very long time now. Many months, before the new year even.

Re:Honestly...

[Durinthal]

Only after several years of beta driving that will be available to 90% of drivers.

Re:ORWELLIAN DOUBLESPEAK

[jpardey]

I agree with you on all but one thing: voting. I would trust the founders of a company slightly more than I would trust the majority shareholders. Shareholders don't buy in to improve a company's ethics, they buy in to make more money. Even without the "You must maximize shareholder value" law (I believe it is state/country dependant, and in the corprate charter), the shareholders are going to constantly push a corporation to put capital gains above all else. I would really rather the shareholders didn't get to vote.

But yes, something does seem fishy about this.

some musings

[benow]

small hydrolic engine (1 or more), low horsepower, high efficiency with high output, to generator to small electric cache to large spinning disc moved by electromagnetics tied to drivetrain, regenerative braking. no need for many batteries, as power can be generated on demand... cache large enough for bursts. gearless spinning disc provides constant accelleration, high torque (higher than in wheel) high efficiency and stability... gyro action of discs paired with maglev shocks, or similar, should keep chassis constantly level regardless of terrain. should easly do 100mpg+ with performance as good if not better than current highend. modular/standard engine/generator blocks could interface at the electrical level, and scale to the task at hand, from small commuter to semi hauler. hydrolic engines have less wear and much greater power output.

what would be nice is a better train system, especially for package transport... ideally subterranian maglev, bored by nuclear sufficient worms, but that's a bit far out there.

What about 50mpg conventional vehicles?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

So.... supporting a 45mpg hybrid is a GoodThing and supporting a 50mpg conventional, or an electric only, or some other alternative is bad? Sure, hybrids help, but for a lot of people they're just guilt absolvers.

Re:Isnt "for profit charity" an oxymoron?

[Lehk228]

you do realize that non-profit cahrities have significant restrictions on their activities, and if the organizaiton does not need the financial benefits of being tax-free there is no reason to go that way.

if google.org was to, for example own n important patent on new automotive technology they could use the money to expand while doing other charity work rather than tiptoeing around a maze of federal regulations

They're Stanfordites, exclusionism implied.

[sethstorm]

They're Stanfordites - somehow they dont know how to do it without finding some very exclusionist way to do it.

If they'd want to even get to being anywhere close to being out of that hole as well as strictly following "Do No Evil", they ought to look at history and see what NCR did before they sold everything off. That means they'd have to go back and think "How can it be done without exclusionism and bring in profits?". Even in this era, it still can be done. This time it wouldnt be inward facing such as NCR did, but a outward facing, non-exclusionist group.

Re:Plug-in means 100% electric if u don't drive mu

[Doppler00]

Yes, because we should all make financial decisions that effect our lives based on a 90 minute movie to sway our emotions. By an electric car if it makes financial sense, not because it gives you warm fuzzies.

Refit US domestics, there are plenty hybrids

[sethstorm]

The car initiative is what excites me most really. There is no good scientific/manufacturing reason that I know of that we can't be driving around in affordable hybrid/completely petrol devoid cars. It really does seem to be a reluctance based on the huge oil cartels.

So if Google, with its huge wealth, can kick start the availability of cars that are cheaper to run and far better for the environment, how can there not be a market?

Unfortunately they're going to have to be making a drop-in replacement for some of the finer Detroit built cars (hint:Mid 1980's/Early 1990's Big Three US domestics onward for a small target) already out on the road before I see any interest. Then the deal breaker is if the performance isnt equivalent to engine that's been replaced, from those 4cyl cars that could definitely use the boost up to the highend vehicles that have plenty of room under the hood and could still be made to perform the same.

That would be proof of how good of a job they could do, and not be something too large of a job to do to prove how well they could fix that problem instead of creating another one. The cars exist, and people already have them - just that this would be small enough of a target to move people in the right direction while not throwing out what works.

Re:Isnt "for profit charity" an oxymoron?

[drDugan]

sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.

just because someone say the word charity does not make it so. This is a for profit. period.

Parent not a flamebait

[pimpimpim]

Really, creating an efficient fuel-economy car is actually something all major car designers are doing already, and they do it for a good cause - their wallets. Just think about it, Mercedes and Swatch created the Smart, which has an average 60 MPG (that is from the UK site).

Mercedes and Swatch would have been pretty "smart" to call that a 'charity' cause, but I would call it 'profitable business'. There are a lot of causes to find that can not be mistaken for profitable business, what about helping the people at the bottom of society, for example.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm all in favor of high-MPG cars, but I think that the parent is right on this one. Google maybe should transform their business into a general innovation-company, since they apparently have lots of nice ideas but can't place them within their current 'core business', which is web searching (or actually something else, I don't really know). Currently, they will have trouble selling stockholders/investors the idea to build a car, so they had to make this construction to go through with it.

By the way, you don't have to be google to develop innovative low-fuel cars (both links unrelated, also check out the VW lupo 3 L / 100 km car)

Re:Parent not a flamebait

[Bryansix]

Uhm, did you look at that website? The smart did not obtain that kind of gas mileage through inovation. It obtained it by making a car so small and useless that nobody would actually buy one.

Simpler way to measure it!

[Rockgod]

You could do all that or just measure the costs incurred maintaining that vehicle in terms of $/mile or miles/$. This makes details of the fuel used irrelevant. This way most economic car would be the one that gives more miles per buck. And yeah we could keep all the pollution norms in place to make sure that the new type of fuel would be easy on environment.

Re:Simpler way to measure it!

[Eivind Eklund]

Gas should be insured against future pollution cleanup costs, in order to have a realistic pricing. With that, and suitable requirements for the companies doing the insuring (no "We're just going to set it up so we go bankrupt the day we have to handle things, and take the profit now"), the market could take care of optimizing *including* pollution handling...

Eivind.

Re:Simpler way to measure it!

[vidarh]

Or just take the European route and tax the hell out of gas. In the UK about 72% of the gas price is taxes.

We have far more expensive gas, but the result is that people care far more about fuel economy.

Re:Simpler way to measure it!

[Eivind Eklund]

Well, I'm from Norway - I think we have the highest gasoline price in the world. I just believe it is STILL underpriced, and that the correct thing to do would be to make the price real - in other words, include the cost of cleaning up after negative sides of the gas. Markets are very very good at optimizing, but they have to have the correct input price. The price of a resource isn't the cost of getting it out of the ground - it's the cost of getting it out of the ground plus the cost of cleaning up afterwards.

Re:Simpler way to measure it!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

And even with our absurdly high tax rates on fuel, some political parties are still talking about adding mega-taxes on "highly polluting vehicles" (as in, extra thousands of pounds per year for having one).

The thing is, I used to drive a little 1.2-litre Vauxhall Corsa (1995 model) to work. Now I drive a 2-litre turbo Subaru Impreza WRX (2003 model). The former was significantly more fuel efficient (though as an interesting anecdote, far less fuel efficient than the newer model) and would be in one of the lowest bands for these new "environmental taxes". The latter is deemed a monster, and would be in the highest or second-highest band. And yet in reality, the WRX's emissions aren't much higher than a typical family saloon.

What's really telling is that when I drove the Corsa, I commuted around a 70 mile round-trip per day to get to work. Now I work in the city where I live, and do maybe 1/10 of that. I generate vastly less pollution now than I used to, and most of what I do generate is sitting in artificially generated traffic queues designed by our local bus-mad council to make car driving unappealing and promote bus use. And yet, these proposed "environmental taxes" would penalise me far more today.

If you insist on using the tax system to make some behaviours unpopular (I question the ethicality of this approach in any context, but that's a different matter) and you want to make pollution from cars unpopular, then taxing fuel rather than the type of vehicle makes far more sense.

Re:Simpler way to measure it!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Does it not make sense to you that people should be taxed more for having more polluting vehicles

If that were a fair reflection of what was being proposed, that would make perfect sense, but it doesn't make sense at all today, because the definitions being used are inaccurate weasel words: I now drive a "more polluting vehicle", yet I produce nearly an order of magnitude less pollution than I did driving a "less polluting vehicle".

Even with the same vehicle, someone driving with good technique and an awareness for the effect things like electricals and aerodynamics have on efficiency will get far better mileage (and thus far lower pollution) than someone who thrashes the car to bits with the windows half-open, the air con on all the time, front fogs on at night to look "cool" (if illegal, at least in my country), the rear window demister switch left in the on position all the time, and 100kg of unnecessary baggage permanently stored in the back.

My point here is that there is little correlation between the type of car someone drives and the amount of pollution they generate driving it, and even what there is does not imply a causal link between the car and the pollution. If you want to improve the environment by increasing taxes, then it makes far more sense to push the tax on fuel up even further, since there is at least a causal link between the amount of fuel consumed and the amount of pollution generated.

Taxing fuel more does make sense, but it also makes sense to apply preventative measures to reduce the level of really polluting cars on the road, after all, we're not the ones going to be cleaning it up.

Be careful what you wish for. The environmental cost of everyone scrapping their "more polluting" vehicles on the day before the taxes change and buying new "less polluting" vehicles instead would be staggering. If you insist on taxing by vehicle type, then it makes far more sense to apply a tax at the time a new car is first purchased, thus incentivising people who are buying a new car anyway to switch to more economic models. As we've seen with safety improvements in the past, that will result in the vast majority of cars on the road following the new rules within a relatively small number of years. But that's not what's being proposed, at least by any of the major political parties here.

Re:Simpler way to measure it!

[rundgren]

Norwegians taking over /. The real cost of gasoline is not integrated into the price anywhere in the world.. To do so would also be impossible. Because cleaning the atmoshpere of co2 is not like removing some barrels of toxic waste - the cost is almost impossible to predict. If we should try to predict the cost of 5m+ of rising oceans anyway, and integrate into gas prices, the prices would have to be ridicoulusly high. The only remainding option is the Northern European way: to tax gasoline as much as politically possible. High gas prices is gaining acceptance in our societies, and we should keep the pressure on to increase taxation even more - to force the world to usde climate-neutral alternatives.

Re:Simpler way to measure it!

[Manchot]

But gas prices fluctuate according to position and time. Hence, it would be completely meaningless. For example, if you say that your car gets 8.3 mi/$, do you mean 8.3 mi/$ in 2006 New York or in 1986 Saint Louis? That would make a pretty big difference. In fact, look at the difference between gas prices now and gas prices two months ago. Did everyone's mileage increase by 16%? No, gas prices just went down by that much.

Re:Simpler way to measure it!

[Eivind Eklund]

I know the real cost isn't integrated anywhere. I'm saying I think it should be. And yes, I know the price would be fairly high - I don't think anybody know how high, as there's significant variation involved, and a bunch of stuff we don't know. This means, in my opinion, that we should err on the safe side, at least as far as we are able to.

Moving towards a correct price would let us use markets to move towards a sustainable economy. As it is, we're basically stealing from our kids to have a convenient time now. I find that to suck.

Re:Simpler way to measure it!

[GreyWolf3000]

If the taxes are going in to a "Fossil Fuel Cleanup Fund" then I think such a tax is justified.

However, if I know governments at all, it may as well be spent on tootsie roll pops. When the disaster strikes and people go 'crying to the government,' the governments will likely just borrow more money for the cleanups and then raise taxes afterwards to cover it.

In an ideal society, we wouldn't need government here, because the majority of people would make the right decisions. When the majority of the people don't make the right decisions, can we even claim that 'majority rule' is an effective paradigm for government?

Re:Simpler way to measure it!

[Eccles]

If the taxes are going in to a "Fossil Fuel Cleanup Fund" then I think such a tax is justified.

However, if I know governments at all, it may as well be spent on tootsie roll pops.

My plan, yet to be written up, has the tax returned to all citizens (who bear the cost of the pollution damage) each year. No general funding from the gas tax, every man, woman, and child would get an annual check.

That makes it a heck of a lot harder to characterize as a tax increase, or a grab for more money for government to waste.

Re:Simpler way to measure it!

[aevans]

Yeah. You should see the cost of electric cars! Hydroelectric Dams, Strip Mines, Nuclear Waste sites. Thank god for good clean oil!

Re:Simpler way to measure it!

[Bluesman]

That's just such a fantastic idea, I can't believe I've never heard it before.

This should be required for all government "sin" taxes. Make the up front cost higher, so that when people get the check at the end of the year they can really think about how much they'd be spending on wasteful activity.

Who would get the $1000 check at the end of the year and say, "Yes! Now I can go drive around for days."

I mean, this isn't an ideal solution for me, but it's a damn good compromise with those who just won't be happy without the government interference.

Re:Simpler way to measure it!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Look at the car I drive again, and ask whether you really think I don't know anything about engine displacement. :-)

If you're from somewhere like the US, 2l probably does seem small. In the UK, it's towards the upper end of the spectrum, and I'm talking about a turbo-charged AWD model, which makes its emissions a little higher than a typical 2l saloon. (Of course, it's still not that much higher than say a 1.6l mid-sized family car, which is kinda my point.)

Now, ask yourself whether it's serving the stated goal for someone who drives that 1.6l mid-sized family car and emits around 75% of the CO2 that my car does to pay only 10% of the road tax that I'd have to pay. That's what would happen under the Liberal Democrat proposals in the UK, where my car is well into the second highest band. While you're thinking about that, remember that you can easily make 20% difference to your fuel economy just with the electrics/air con...

Re:Simpler way to measure it!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

If you insist on taxing by vehicle type, then it makes far more sense to apply a tax at the time a new car is first purchased, thus incentivising people who are buying a new car anyway to switch to more economic models. As we've seen with safety improvements in the past, that will result in the vast majority of cars on the road following the new rules within a relatively small number of years. But that's not what's being proposed, at least by any of the major political parties here.

At this point, it seems I owe an apology to the Lib Dems. Having tracked down their official policy document, rather than relying further on misleading summaries of it, it sounds like they are indeed proposing to apply these rates to new car purchases only. I still think it's the wrong policy, but at least it's not screwing those whose choice has already been made.

sinclair anyone?

[just-a-stone]

so google's the next visionary creator of electric vehicles?

MOD ABUSE?

[GrumpySimon]

Does the parent post REALLY need a -1 Troll? You might not agree with him, but there's no obvious trolling above, but a well reasoned and polite response.

Re:Odd

[Wizard052]

That is SO true. More often than not, people need reason and purpose to live than x quantities of material things - money,food,clothes,cars...etc. Notice that man can adapt to variable quantities of even the most 'basic' things but with some of the most abstract stuff, it tends to boil down to a Yes or No. Does Columbine kid feel secure/happy/contented/protected/inspired/positive ly-motivated? (Yes: Carry on with life with greater and greater aspirations. No: Take a firearm and dispose of the 'offenders')

Don't be evil

[iendedi]

Gee, I can't wait to see how Google finds a way to profit from a battered women's shelter.

Exactly.... In the boardroom:

What should we do to make more profit?

.. well... We could take our "Don't be evil philosophy and apply it to making money in performing valuable charity work for the poor, destitute and dehumanized populations of the world!"

.. hmm... Wow! Your right! "Don't be evil" will TOTALLY go over well with the poor! We'll make a fortune! Haha! I have a bigger bed on our Google Jet than you!!!

Summer of Code

[wysiwia]

That's why they would be careful with exactly who they accept, just like they do with their Summer of Code.

Just imagine a billion would mean 1000 Summer of Codes in one year or 200 in five years. There's no need to limit it to studends but anybody participating in FOSS.

Besides the current SoC has a rather low impact since it doesn't follow any vision but only strenghten already established projects.

O. Wyss

Plug in hybrid?

[JPriest]

I am a little dissapointed to see Google jumping on the whole plug in hybrid thing, I didn't expect them to buy into the hype too. A "100mpg" equiv plug in hybrid is actually pretty trivial to build. The problem with it is that they are costly to build, there is an _enormous_ amount of red tape (crash test ratings etc.) involved in producing a car. Lastly, nobody wants to spend > $50,000 on a $10,000 car with an electric drive train that needs to be parked for 15 hours to charge after every 200 miles of travel.

Re:Plug in hybrid?

[14CharUsername]

Well it does burn fuel if it doesn't have battery power, so you don't have to plug it in for 15 hours or whatever. You can drive it as much as you want, just that you'll be using more fuel than electricity.

Yes it is expensive, but economies of scale will drop the price a bit. And if gas prices get any higher it will be worthwhile. Even with gas prices now, a if you could get a hybrid civic for $10,000 more than a regular civic you'll be saving money. When gas prices take another jump (which is guaranteed) and if they become more popular then the costs drop. It is very likely that the costs will cross and it will be more cost effective to buy a hybrid than a regular gas only vehicle.

Re:Plug in hybrid?

[dourk]

I sure hope Google is already aware of the issues you state. That way, they can make sure their development efforts are targetted at solving those, rather than just bolting a car together.

Re:Plug in hybrid?

[evilviper]

Lastly, nobody wants to spend > $50,000 on a $10,000 car with an electric drive train that needs to be parked for 15 hours to charge after every 200 miles of travel.

No, that would be an all-electric car. A hybrid can be unplugged for it's entire life, and operate just fine.

What I'd personally like to see is a serial hybrid... Much less weight. Much less complexity. Potentially much less expensive. Much more flexible. Easy to install larger battery packs. etc.

Re:Plug in hybrid?

[JPriest]

Obviously like everyone else, they would like to solve these problems. The problem is that there are no simple solutions, all engineering/design decisions are trade-offs. Since improvements tend to be evolutionary (not revolutionary) it is unlikely the added cost/weight added by the secondary electric drive train will be woth the cost.

Take the Toyota Prius for instance, yeah it is only $23,000 and has pretty good gas mileage. But also consider that it is no more powerfull or roomy than a Chevy Aveo wich has a base invoice of $8,836 despite Toyota's cheaper labor and manufacturing costs. The real-world gas mileage of the Gas only Aveo isn't far off the Prius either (the hybrids are much better at the EPA estimate tests than real world driving).

There is no magic bullet to efficiency, the "secret" behind the Prius's efficiency has more to do with it being scaled down, light, and aerodynamic than the hybrid sticker on the back of it, but the average American is too stupid to realize that. I guess I am just a little dissapointed becasue I thought Google was engineering minded enough to see this.

way to avoid being labeled a mutal fund by SEC?

[the-pdm]

I wonder if this is a way to avoid being labeled a mutual fund by the SEC. They drew attention from the SEC for investing in projects outside their core business and ascting more like a mutual fund than a company.

This isn't innovation, it's PR.

[xplenumx]

So how is this different from Google simply being a venture capitalist? There are already plenty of venture capital firms who specialize in specifically funding clean technology, disease research, and other 'social good'. While I welcome Google's investment, this 'for profit charity' sounds more like nothing more than a spin-doctoring PR stunt.

Re:How to capitalize on "do no evil"?

[Sassinak]

I would not agree with that statement.

Quite a lot of us have been disillusioned by the backdoor (eg: silent) philanthopist. But would you not agree that the Carnagee/Mellon foundation which has "invested" so much in music and in the library system. and quite a number of other large very visible charitable organizations (ie: red cross, etc...).

Just because they choose to operate as a for-profit org which sidesteps quite a number of problems with the current non-profit struture, doesn't make it a PR stunt (though I am sure some PR thought has gone into it) or false. To my mind, this works perfectly with their current structure.

Google is notoriously secreative about is going on within the "googleplex". As a non-profit charity that has ANY association with google.com, anything that passes between (eg: knowledge, people, resources, etc...) them must be public for review and inspection. vs. a for-profit charity is a shell that does good, while still keeping the business structure.

Personally, before we start firing up the torches and sharpening the pitchforks, lets give them a chance. Yes, we have been abused by many monsters (AT&T, IBM, Microsoft, etc...) but just because its a little ugly doesn't mean its a blood sucker too.

Some Europeans are more Europeans than others :-)

[hummassa]

my car on-board computer gives "mileage" in l/100km ... and I don't think this measurement is very useful. I prefer to know how far I will go on a litre, and not how much will it cost to go 100 km.

* 1 mile = 1.609 km
* 1 gallon = 3.785 l
* 1 mile / gallon = 0.425 km/l

== This is really very much ... my household's "economic" car makes 16 km/l (40 mpg, 6 l/100km) and the "road" one makes 8 km/l (20mpg, 12 l/100km)

Charities Can Lobby

[stealie72]

Not that I expect the newsmedia to ever get it right, but Charities are allowed to lobby congress. The can't make it a major part of their work, but they can do it.

Unfortunately, there's a rather vague statute that says charities (501(c)(3) organizations) can only lobby to the extent that is uses "no significant part" of their income. This is generally accepted to mean under 5%, but don't piss off the IRS and find out.

There is also a way that charities can elect to come under stricter but more defined limits as well.

LA has street vendors...

[192939495969798999]

Why are there street vendors in LA then? Shouldn't they all be in jail? I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Of course you have to have certain permits (which are easy to get) so that the state can track you down because otherwise, you could make people sick with your cooking, so obviously there's a public interest in making a transient vendor license.

"Olvera Street, the historic Latino/Hispanic community is a worthwhile stop however. It is a bustling community of colorful shops, restaurants and street vendors..."

http://www.world66.com/northamerica/unitedstates/c alifornia/losangeles

Re:Plug-in means 100% electric if u don't drive mu

[hey]

Care to tell use the actual reasons?

Overstatement

[anomaly]

not only did these companies have totally stupid policies that were very likely to result in danger, once disaster struck they were totally unaccountable for the damage they caused.

With all due respect,I believe that you're overstating or over simplifying your case.

The Bhopal disaster was a combination of UCC, Indian government failures and cultural issues. High population density because UCC provided JOBS that paid well, challenges due to differences between American and Indian culture, no infrastructure to support the people (hospitals, sewage treatment, 10K phone lines for 1M+ people, water only a few hours per day, no public transport, so people lived adjacent to the plant) The Indian government turned down offers from UCC to pay for the disaster - because they had an agenda in how the political implications were to be presented and managed.

UCC ponied up $470M for relief for the victims and families. Half a BILLION dollars seems like more than "totally unaccountable."

Exxon paid more than $2.5B to clean up after the oil spill. They paid $1.1B in settlements, and they were fined $5B. On top of that, their image was tarnished to the point that people today still avoid buying gas from them.

Look, I'm no apologist for corporate entities (or government for that matter) but your argument is weakened by your overstatement.

Re:Overstatement

[Chryana]

High population density because UCC provided JOBS that paid well, challenges due to differences between American and Indian culture, no infrastructure to support the people (hospitals, sewage treatment, 10K phone lines for 1M+ people, water only a few hours per day, no public transport, so people lived adjacent to the plant)

I'm not really seeing how any of this is relevant to the causes of the Bhopal disaster. There were at least half a dozen different security measures that could have reduced or completely prevented the accident, all of them offline to save money. The only thing that may or may be relevant in your comment is that you seem to be blaming the victims for living near the plant where they work. The number of the victims would have made the presence of an hospital completely irrelevant.

The Indian government turned down offers from UCC to pay for the disaster - because they had an agenda in how the political implications were to be presented and managed.

UCC ponied up $470M for relief for the victims and families. Half a BILLION dollars seems like more than "totally unaccountable."

You conveniently forgot to mention that the settlement a family received if one of their member died in the accident was ~2200 dollars. Which means those who suffered from symptoms such as spontaneous abortions and partial or complete blindness probably received even less. No need to capitalize the word billion, the proper thing to do would have been to put the word relief between quotes.

I'm not going to reply to the rest of what you wrote, I just wanted to point out your comment was a shameless apology of the company responsible for the worst industrial accident in history.

Re:Overstatement

[mrchaotica]

The Indian government turned down offers from UCC to pay for the disaster - because they had an agenda in how the political implications were to be presented and managed.

UCC ponied up $470M for relief for the victims and families. Half a BILLION dollars seems like more than "totally unaccountable."

You know, this discussion isn't complete until somebody presents how the situation was actually ultimately resolved.

What actually ended up happening is that the US government ended up paying off the Indian government. (I don't know how this came about, whether it was UCC refusing to pay or the Indian government refusing to accept UCC's payment). But here's the interesting thing: the US government didn't pay in money, they paid by giving Indians extra consideration in terms of immigration and low-interest (or interest free?) business loans.

So, you know how it seems all these convenience stores have suddenly become Indian-owned over the last decade or so? And you know how everybody on Slashdot complains about all the Indians getting H1-B visas and such? Yeah, that's all due to the Bhopal disaster!

Re:They'd better improve Linux support

[pcardno]

True - it's much more important for Linux users to be able to look at the Bellagio from above in Google Earth than it is to have a 100MPG hybrid vehicle..

Jeez... Get some perspective!

Back that up?

[brunes69]

Cell phones and laptops are often charged fully and run down below 50% for long battery run-time. This kills batteries.

Do you have any documentation to back up this claim?

Every single piece of advice I have ever heard or read on rechargeable NiMH batteries says that to ensure the longest lifetime of a battery, you should *always* "run it try" then give it a full recharge. It is the incomplete "halfway" charging cycles that give the battery "false memory" and cause the chemicals to not assume their full capacity after the next charge.

This is backed up with my personal experience as well, since I have **never**, going through 4 different cordless brands, had to replace a battery pack. In fact, the cordless set I just sold in my yard sale, was over 8 years old and the battery pack was still going strong.

IMO, this long life is because I always run my handsets, *without any charging at all*, until I get the "low battery" warning, then I place them on the charger for a minimum of 12-16 hours. This cycle of deep discharge / full recharge keeps them at their peak capacity for years.

Re:Back that up?

[Latent IT]

I didn't actually read your post that carefully, nor do I remember his article that thoroughly...

That being said, ye olde Dan, of dansdata.com has a good (great?) article on the memory effect.

And an unfortunate title as well, but alas.

Re:Back that up?

[frdmfghtr]

IMO, this long life is because I always run my handsets, *without any charging at all*, until I get the "low battery" warning, then I place them on the charger for a minimum of 12-16 hours. This cycle of deep discharge / full recharge keeps them at their peak capacity for years.

That's because your cordless phones probably used Nickel Cadmium (NiCd) batteries, which benefit from deep discharge/recharge cycles (aka 'conditioning'.)

Now, regarding NiMH batteries...

Every single piece of advice I have ever heard or read on rechargeable NiMH batteries says that to ensure the longest lifetime of a battery, you should *always* "run it try" then give it a full recharge. It is the incomplete "halfway" charging cycles that give the battery "false memory" and cause the chemicals to not assume their full capacity after the next charge.

The occasional deep discharge/recharge is acceptable, but not every time. From www.greenbatteries.com:

Do NiMH batteries have memory effect?

Technically, NiMH batteries do not have a "memory effect", but strictly speaking neither do NiCds. However NiMH batteries can experience voltage depletion, also called voltage depression, similar to that of NiCd batteries, but the effect is normally less noticeable. To completely eliminate the possibility of NiMH batteries suffering any voltage depletion effect manufacturers recommend an OCCASIONAL, complete discharge of NiMH batteries followed by a full recharge. NiMH batteries can also be damaged by overcharge and improper storage (see the NiCd section immediately above this one). Most users of NiMH batteries don't have to be concerned with this voltage depletion effect. But if you use a device say a flashlight, radio, or digital camera for only a short time every day and then charge the batteries every night, you will need to let the NiMH (or NiCd) batteries run down occasionally.

Note the word "OCCASIONAL."

It appears you are comparing your usage habits of NiCd batteries with the OP's statements about NiMH batteries.

Re:Back that up?

[Matt Perry]

Every single piece of advice I have ever heard or read on rechargeable NiMH batteries says that to ensure the longest lifetime of a battery, you should *always* "run it try" then give it a full recharge.

Yes, but only for NiMH batteries (like in home cordless phones). Almost all laptop and cell phone batteries are lithium-ion. Li-ion can only take about 400 to 500 full discharges before they won't hold a charge anymore. You are supposed to keep them charged as much and as often as possible for the longest life.

Re:Back that up?

[Technician]

Note the word "OCCASIONAL."

Even Toyota does this. One of the factory service items (I think 100K miles) is to deep cycle the traction battery. In the car software it has an occasional equalisation cycle which you may or may not notice in normal driving. The engine will run longer and cause a temporary drop in fuel effeciency as it fully charges the battery. (the battery is normaly kept between 40-80% charge) I've noticed this only once in 75K miles of driving. The software may skip some of the equalisation operations if your normal driving takes you over mountains which will fully charge the battery and take care of that automatic maitnance interval.

Re:Back that up?

[frdmfghtr]

Funny you mention that...when my Prius was in for the 90k mile service, the rep told me that the bettery had passed some sort of test, maybe it was a deep discharge/load test or something. I didn't know the testing waws scheduled, but I didn't complain; it didn't show up on the bill.

Re:Back that up?

[Technician]

Funny you mention that...when my Prius was in for the 90k mile service, the rep told me that the bettery had passed some sort of test, maybe it was a deep discharge/load test or something. I didn't know the testing waws scheduled, but I didn't complain; it didn't show up on the bill.

That is the one. I didn't remember the interval but I did remember it was near the 100K miles. Mine will be due in another 15K miles. It is a deep discharge/full recharge cycle to equalize the cell pack and test capacity. They probably do it at 90K miles to catch any problems before the warrenty expires to prevent complaints of batteries dying right after the warranty. They don't want an i-pod 1 year battery failure to drive away customers like i-pod customers finding they have to buy a new one every year.

Re:How to capitalize on "do no evil"?

[Vexorian]

Right: make a subsidiary on a potentially very lucrative technology and call it "non-profit". Public is not counting their taxes paid or their profit. Public will remember the last words: "non-profit".

Man, the article is filled with things like "this will be a for-profit" organization and "this will pay taxes". They are not calling it non-profit. What's wrong with your reading skills?

Re:ORWELLIAN DOUBLESPEAK

[Manchot]

You've just captured the essence of why I love private companies: you can do whatever the hell you want with them, and don't have to worry about angering shareholders while doing good work. Case in point: compare the CEO and owner of Polartec, Aaron Feuerstein, to the CEO and founder of Costco (a public company), James Sinegal. When Feuerstein's American factory burned down in 1996, he rebuilt it and reimbursed his employees for the missed time. Now, look at Sinegal. He has a comparatively low salary for a CEO, and Costco is known for its generous compensation and benevolent relationship with its employees. Both people are known for their good work. Feurestein could do whatever he wanted with his company, because he owns Polartec. Last I heard, Sinegal was getting into trouble for not maximizing shareholder value.

Re:Homework not done and it shows.

[bmajik]

Actually a quote from a Toyota guy said that the expected battery life of the prius is 5-7 years. While that may be the life of the car to many people, I am driving a set of german cars made in the late 80s (which are still safer and more performant than many modern American cars, fwiw)

Yes, I heard of the Bhopal disaster

[LF11]

I read about the Bhopal disaster. I also read about the Indian government's wasteful spending of the settlement that did occur, and the extradition order for the president of Union Carbide that was never brought to a conclusion.

Fact: Union Carbide made a settlement. This settlement was a pittance, but for the record, the Indian government failed to actually transfer the money to the affected people. They spent it. Fact: The Indian government deliberately obstructed and wasted Union Carbide's settlement money.

Fact: The CEO of Union Carbide at the time (Warren Anderson) failed to appear in Indian court for his trial. He has been declared a fugitive from justice. The Indian government issued an extradition order. The U.S. government never delivered Warren Anderson. Fact: The U.S. government deliberately obstructed justice. Fact: It is the U.S. government's duty to respond to an extradition order. The idea of an Indian bounty hunter securing Warren Anderson for trial is ludicrous.

The Bhopal disaster is a shining example of the problem of government. Accidents happen. Union Carbide was behond negligent in their handling of the disaster (shutting off the warning sirens to avoid causing panic, for example). But the Indian and US governments have stopped any aid or justice in this situation. Union Carbide was at fault, but to ignore the governments' roles in the disaster and the continuing problems resulting from it is blind naivety.

Fact: Governments are, by far, the #1 polluter in the world.

Re:Yes, I heard of the Bhopal disaster

[forgetmenot]

Fact: Governments are, by far, the #1 polluter in the world.

Care to point us to any references that corroborate this?

Capitalism meets socialism

[Gablar]

This google boys are quite bright. I'm glad that they, just like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, realize the dire economic situation for the US for the not too distant future. See, wealth is a result of growth and not necesarily profits, when a company grows their shareholeders make money. It reallly dont matter what is your product as long as there is a demand for your product. Google's product just like B&M foundation is charity. Soon it is going to be in very very high demand.

Who is going to pay for this charity? Investors of course, the very rich knows that without a strong middle class their fortunes will be greatly diminished, so they are starting to invest in the middleclass, so they can rip more benefit in the future. In a very crazy and unexpected way, the capitalist have realize that they need a socialist safety net, and while they are at it, they will make loads of money from it. Google is taking a safer approach than Bill Gates but they are both applying the same concept. After all all the buildings and intellectual property will belong to Google.

Quite a nice experiment.

PS. I'm glad that the real government is starting to directly help its people, even if they do it for their own profit

Re:Plug-in means 100% electric if u don't drive mu

[hustlebird]

how about that is cost in excess of $900,000 for gm to produce? Plus that movie argued about cold weather performance of fuel-cell, but seems to forget that gm engineers figured around 4-11 miles distance on a full charge of the ev1 in similar conditions. It was doomed to begin with. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1

Electric cars already get 100MPG...

[Rhipf]

if you compare them to a vehicle with a 2 gallon tank.

It has to be posted.

[yet another coward]

1. Found google.org.
2. ???
3. Profit!

Reg-free

[yet another coward]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/technology/14goo gle.html?ex=1315886400&en=56861c8f4ca9b3e7&ei=5090 &partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Both /. submitters and /. editors should use the link generator for The New York Times .

Robert Heinlein again

[Catbeller]

Reminds me of the "Long Range Foundation" in Heinlein's juvenile, "Time for the Stars". A foundation dedicated to pouring enormous amounts of money into basic research that no business wants to touch.

Google.org is going to be richer than the .com, eventually. American business culture has forgotten that "bread cast upon the water comes back sevenfold", the charter of the LRF. Non-military basic research. We don't do that anymore. Even the universities have become proprietary corporate entities.

How much has the Cold War and the "War on Terror" cost us by pouring money into better ways of killing instead of say, the trivial task of building a decent battery/capacitor? We're not rich at all now, compared to what we could have gained had we been sane and financed research and infrastructure instead of ways of microwaving protestors and blowing up the world.

Re:Plug-in means 100% electric if u don't drive mu

[A*OnYourA**]

That would be too long of a post and it's been covered in other places:
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic8972.html

Also see http://www.calcars.org/vehicles.html to see some info on their plug-in hybrids that achieve over 100 MPG. Hopefully Google will help fund something similar, except this time we can buy it.

Re:Can't wait

[Ingolfke]

That's easy. Turn them hos out... I mean... find employment opportunities for them in the local community and take a small percentage of their income to cover healthcare, security, and client management.

Not for all Non-Profits

[KurtisKiesel]

I work for a 501(c)1 corporation which is a Non-Profit that has been formed by order of the Government, we are an Alcohol and Drug Adiction Services Board. Google refuses to allow non-profits with our status to use their grant beta. I wonder if any of the other types of 501(c) they will accept. There are many 501(C)7's out there that do sports activities for example.

Thanks for holding technology back, Google

[macserv]

The successful Hydrogen Economy is within our grasp, and I'm disgusted by companies creating new hybrid designs that are still nothing but half-measures in reducing carbon dioxide and particulate emissions. If there's one thing that hybrids have proven, it's that electric car technology can work really well when backed up by an energy-generating powerplant. But if that powerplant is a fossil-fuel burning engine, you're still polluting, and you're not part of the solution.

If hydrogen didn't work, I'd be less vocal. But it does work, and if companies like Honda and Toyota had gotten behind it when GM shared their research, we'd probably have it by now. Quite the opposite has happened: GM has been forced to spend time and effort developing hybrid vehicles so that they don't appear to be behind the curve, when in reality they are leaps and bounds ahead.

Hydrogen works, and will work more smoothly as time goes on. Breakthroughs in photovoltaic cells are making it possible to electrolyze water at a much faster rate without using power from the grid. This means that soon, any gas station with a water supply and exposure to sunlight can make its own hydrogen on site. Larger solar facilities can be set up to create supplies for darker regions and high periods of demand. In the mean time, we can keep Big Oil happy by using the hydrogen they can produce by chemically, cleanly refining fossil fuels to extract as much hydrogen as possible.

The "mini-Hindenburg" stuff is tired and inaccurate: GM's compressed hydrogen tanks can now take a lot more abuse than a gas tank can without exploding (and anything with a enough potential energy will discharge violently when roughed up enough, including the lithium-ion batteries in a plug-in hybrid).

Next year you're going to start seeing the GM Sequel all over the place, and it will become clear that hydrogen works, and hybrids were a stop-gap. By developing/building/supporting/buying hybrid vehicles, you may have helped to reduce your CO2 footprint slightly, but you've ultimately solved nothing.

Re:Thanks for holding technology back, Google

[graphicsguy]

Hydrogen works, and will work more smoothly as time goes on. Breakthroughs in photovoltaic cells are making it possible to electrolyze water at a much faster rate without using power from the grid. This means that soon, any gas station with a water supply and exposure to sunlight can make its own hydrogen on site. Larger solar facilities can be set up to create supplies for darker regions and high periods of demand. In the mean time, we can keep Big Oil happy by using the hydrogen they can produce by chemically, cleanly refining fossil fuels to extract as much hydrogen as possible.

Are you claiming that individual fueling stations will be capable of locally generating enough power using solar energy to fuel all the cars that "fill up" there? That's awfully hard to to believe. Do you have any sources on this?

Re:How to capitalize on "do no evil"?

[mapkinase]

Change "non-profit" -> "philantropy" in my comment. Sorry.

Re:Plug-in is inline with Google's existing vision

[David Off]

My Yaris 4wD does 80 mpg on general driving, I could probably get 100mpg if I drove more carefully. I also recall Dahatsu selling a Charade Diesel in the early 1990s with a claimed 100mpg/100mpg (but not at the same time). Google need to set their sights a bit higher.

Re:Plug-in is inline with Google's existing vision

[smithmc]

  I know that Google employees receive a $5000 discount (plus a few other perks that I'm not clear on) on any purchase of a hybrid vehicle that gets 45 mpg (ie, Prius, Insight or Civic Hybrid).

That seems unfair to folks who might want to buy, say, a VW TDI, that can break 45 mpg and not end up eventually leaving behind a mess of batteries to be disposed of...

My car gets 100 MPG on waist vegetable oil

[adaminnj]

I run on WVO, I get the waist oil free it cost about 70 cents a gal to filter and I only use diesel to start and shut down the cars I have. I get about 2000 miles per fill-up of diesel 20 US Gal at 30 MPG on VO I fill the VO tank quite a few times before I have to go buy diesel.

Re:My car gets 100 MPG on waist vegetable oil

[triso]

I run on WVO, I get the waist oil free...

I have corn and canola on mine. What do you have growing on your waist?

Re:My car gets 100 MPG on waist vegetable oil

[adaminnj]

you like my spelling you should see my passwds hahaha

One hot dog and a side order of e. Coli , pleae.

[westlake]

if a person in LA went down to the store, bought and cooked up some hot-dogs, and then sold them on the street corner - he would likely be in jail, taxed, and fined over 40K before the night was out - and then be forced to get permits and inspections at great expense to himself. I'm sorry, no argument about government protecting people can justify that kind of behavior.j

In Lemonade Stand a mistake doesn't put your customers in the morgue.

Every year there are 76 million foodbourne illnesses in the U,S, 325,000 hospitalizations, 5,000 deaths. Foodborne illness In Russia this week 103 children hospitalized in Belgorod region with food poisoning In India this month Orissa village faces boycott after food poisoning deaths

The street vendor began to disappear about the same time as clean and responsible fast-food outlets like White Castle began selling five burgers for ten cents as take-out. (ca. 1921)

Re:Homework not done and it shows.

[Technician]

Cell phones and laptops are different animals, they use Li-Ion not NiMH of the Prius.

Some newer equipment does indeed use Li-Ion batteries. However the ThinkPad T21 I am using right now uses NIMH. Sorry I didn't specify to compare the same tech against the same tech. My cordless phone still uses NiCad cells, so the tech used is not limited to just one technology. The advantage is cost. My home wireless phone cost much less than a replacement battery for my Nokia cell phone.

Re:One hot dog and a side order of e. Coli , pleae

[argoff]

You don't get it. That argument makes about as much sense as requiring knife permits for the sake of stopping knifings. If they were out to stop deaths, then they could fine or press criminal charges against a vendor who is negligent in food preperation and causes people to get sick, not put them thru a bunch of bureauocracy and fees. It is also a very compelling argument for a buyer beware attitude and patronizing businesses with a good reputation. The fact that they have these rules in place and they still didn't stop people in the US from getting sick should be telling.

Bullshit

[bitspotter]

This doesn't strike me as a charity that's structured for-profit. It strikes me as a for-profit business looking to leverage the PR angle of a charity.

I've heard the ridiculous restrictions placed on non-profits before (what better way is there to effect social change than lobbying government?). I confront the same difficulties when considering that The Burning Man parent organizaiton is an LLC, while the Black Rock Arts Foundation, which pays out thousands for BM art projects, is a non-profit). Which begs the question: if Google.org has the same structure and capabilities as Google.com, then why is it separately incorporated?

The only thing I can think of is PR.

And another thing: The law has enshrined the principle that a company's first loyalty is to its shareholders' profits. It can be SUED if it demonstrably fails this set of priorities. If Google.org's executives, then, are truly putting non-shareholders first, then they do so at considerable legal risk.

Re:Isnt "for profit charity" an oxymoron?

[Shihar]

Non-profit is a tax classification that carries with it a massive amount of red tape and restrictions as to what you can and can not do. If you don't want to follow those regulations you have absolutely no other choice, you MUST declare yourself for-profit and pay normal taxes. The only thing Google has done is say that don't want the restrictions that a non-profit has to follow. Non-profits are limited in how much they can reinvest in themselves, how much they have to spend, and the type of things they can invest in.

Don't let your head explode. Google is just dodging government regulations that non-profits have to follow in exchange for tax-exempt status. They can still be a charity but classified as a for-profit corporation. Unless the Google charity has an IPO, it is still a private corporation that can do whatever it damn well pleases, including not actually make a profit.

Is this a PR stunt? Sure. All corporate donations are done for PR. That isn't a bad thing so long as it actually does some good. I am more then happy to see trade money pumped into charity for good will. The fact that Google is no strapping their charity corporation down with non-profit rules adds hope if anything that it will do something good. There are a billion and one charities operating under non-profit tax status. The fact that Google is not operating under those rules should be a sign that they intend to try a model that is a little different from the norm.

Wait and see what the charity does and don't get so hung up on its tax status. "Non-profit" is a tax status that carries with it regulations, not a mission statement.

Re:One hot dog and a side order of e. Coli , pleae

[LunaticTippy]

Everywhere I've lived there are street vendors. Everything from a family selling burritos out of a cooler to "roach coach" mobile kitchens. Many are licensed, many aren't. There's a hotdog vendor in front of the library most days. Even Home Depot has a vendor, although the name "Hot Digity Dog" makes me queasy.

I've heard of many e. coli poisonings from fast food chains and mass market foodstuffs. I don't think of fast-food chains as clean or responsible.