Slashdot Mirror
Google's Internal Company Goals
Rockgod writes to mention a Google Blogoscoped article about an internal company paper. The paper details Google's big goals and directions for 2006. From the article: "The list included several items, for example: Google wants to have an improved infrastructure to make their engineers more productive. This includes allowing employees to have a universal search tool "containing all public Google information searched on all Google searches." Google also wants to build 10MW of green power to be on track to be carbon neutral. (They also want to reduce "Borg disk waste" by 50%... hmmm, Borg?)
I think it's really an important step for Google to aim for carbon neutrality, starting with green power. Nowadays green power, green building, and other sustainability practices have substantial financial benefits in addition to their environmental ones. Companies are starting to recognize this too, thankfully--Bank of America has a LEED certified building going up in Manhattan that will save massive amounts of emissions of carbon and other pollutants and save massive amounts of money.
What makes me happiest about seeing Google do this is that they are such a role-model for next-generation businesses. If Google achieves carbon neutrality, even partially, the message it will send to corporations, start-ups, and individuals will be, "You can be environmentally conscious and financially successful; the two are not mutually exclusive." That's an important message that is only beginning to spread.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
You really don't see this very often. What short-term or even mid-term payoff could there possibly be to being carbon nuetral? I don't think anyone can stand back and say that Google fits into the mold of what most Companies in this world have become. I applaude Google. I think they are a role-model that other companies (Including the existing big boys) should strive to be more like.
This isn't that much of a suprise though. When you have such a great product & a motivated team, you tend to attract the best & brightest. The best & brightest usually have the best ideas....
Brad
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Except this information was an internal gaol for 2006. If they where doing it for good press...it would have been 'revealed' earlier in the year. I mean think about it...if this was a PR ploy...with no backbone, then they woulda made out with this ASAP. Except they didn't. They made it an internal thing. They didn't announce it, they didn't make any commercials about it.
PR is an immediate short term payoff.
Environmentally friendly practices are cheaper mid/long term. They're also more reliable if you consider the rate of electricity generating capacity being added in North America.
That may mean to consolidate existing services as well, to avoid confusing and diluting the market. For example, Writely and Google Spreadsheets combined to become Google Docs & Spreadsheets. That makes 50% less Google office products. Similarly, things like Froogle and Google Base could combine to become one shopping service.
I'm not sure if it's funny or scary you were modded insightful. Am I the only one who got your joke?
Developers: We can use your help.
Google's social network http://www.orkut.com/ service is ASP.NET based, and quite slow and unstable - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut#Speed_and_Relia bility. I wonder why they don't move it to their Linux infrastructure. Maybe it's time.
Yet. Officially.
If you think that someone is posting "internal" goals on the Internet without at least the tacit approval of the company, you're drinking Google's cool-aid. On top of that, you don't get as much bang for your buck if you announce in 2006 "We're going to strive for carbon neutrality sometime in the next couple of years" as you do announcing in 2007 "This year, Google met an 'internal' goal of becoming carbon neural."
I'm not saying that there isn't some portion of this that's genuinely driven by the desire to be a "good corporate citizen." Certainly it is possible, especailly for a company, to have multiple motives in pursuing this sort of goal. I'd even go so far as to suggest it's more likely that this sort of thing is done for many reasons instead of merely one.
As mentioned before, they have a good product. But their provision of an adequate search tool (for profit) hasn't completely eliminated my interest in rationally assessing their motives.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Informative? Beh, should be tagged Funny. Would make an awesome, cheesy hacker movie though.