Google Goes Green

foobsr writes "Google today announced its RE<C project to make renewable energy cheaper than coal in the near future. The company, and its charitable arm google.org, plan to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the initiative. Larry Page stated: 'With talented technologists, great partners and significant investments, we hope to rapidly push forward. Our goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. We are optimistic this can be done in years, not decades.'"

Comments

Re:Vested interest

[ketilwaa]

That post made my day! Mod +1 funny!

The foundation is a joke

[WindBourne]

Gate's foundation is an attempt to make ppl like him. It was thought up by his wife ( a marketer ) . How much good does it do? meh. Yes, it spends money on such things as aids research. A little here, and a little there. It is designed to impact the largest market.

But Gates has billions at his disposal. If he wanted to make a bigger impact on the world, he would do things that are beyond other VCs (and even most gov). In particular, he could push massive reaseach/development on Alternative energy. Or how about a high speed maglev (say from NY to Milwaukee, with stops along the way). How about putting together a space company, or even an ocean company?

I am sure that you think that this is silly, but by creating a number of companies like that, he employs a number of ppl who then spend their money. In addition, he could have each of these companies be required to give up a percentage to charity (imagine if a companies like MS gave 1% to charity, which it does not).