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Google Gets US Approval To Buy and Sell Energy
An anonymous reader writes "The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Thursday granted Google the authority to buy and sell energy on a wholesale basis. Google applied for the authorization last December through a wholly owned subsidiary called Google Energy. 'We made this filing so we can have more flexibility in procuring power for Google's own operations, including our data centers,' Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick said via e-mail. But the authorization also raises the prospect that Google may start to buy and sell energy as a business." Reader angry_tapir supplies a link to the approval document itself (PDF).
Google Enron!
Google-powered everything!
Does this mean we can attach energy to our emails now?
I know it's popular to hate on Google lately, but I don't understand why tapirs would be angry about it. Oh, nevermind.
Qxe4
All the power to you!
You're working on fiber to the home.
Now you're working on Power.
Perhaps someday soon your name will appear on my utility bills as well.
So-far everything is good. But I'm afraid.
You control my email, you control my web searches, you pay me for ads on my site.
You say don't be evil. And I believe you.
But I'm still afraid. ...
I'm afraid that if I will ever wrong you,
if you're ever displeased with what I say about you,
I will dissapp#~s8 -`15ht@#&fge LOST CARRIER
has the power!
(Don't you hate it when people split up their post like that...and use three ".".)
An overgrown advertising company now wants to own domestic wired/home internet, online communications, video, mobile communications, and now electricity? Fuck you, Google. What, do you want to sell my light usage statistics to drug companies so they can target sleep medication to me?
This is a terrible, terrible decision by the DOE. Google has absolutely no place in this, and never should. When you find yourself actually wanting ENERGY MULTINATIONALS of all corporations to gain somehow, you know a situation is significantly fucked up.
They're arrogant, unethical slime of the lowest order. The absolutely least creative, least innovative, most craven forms of calligulistic capitalism that exist at the moment. They add nothing significant without destroying its promise with their overbearing policies.
And if you think that Google has ever, even once, given something away for free, you're a chump, and completely deserve what's happening to you.
Luckily, Google will eventually become so pathetically overstretched and vulnerable as to be slowly eaten to death by ants. Or perhaps finally justly destroyed via the Government, ten years too late.
Presumably Google have found a way to tag each electron with targetted advertising.
Plug your washing machine into a Google Energy supply and your shirts will come out of the machine covered in ad-words suggestions.
I hate to think what you'll get adverts for when you wash a three day old pair of gruds.
For those of you wondering when Google will become sentient:
I think this proves it already is and is just solidifying its control over the systems it needs to dominate the world!
Next will be when Google becomes a defense contractor specializing in nuclear weapons security.
Poor Larry Page and Sergey Brin, they are probably already "meat puppets" for Google!
Sadly, power corrupts, and trading power has a great reputation for making power more expensive for everyone except the power trader.
Well, the day to be really concerned is when Google buys Skynet.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Sheesh. When can I get a home built (and of course powered by) by Google? Will they start making cars next?
next thing you know y'all be voting someone in office to show your dislike for someone who's leaving office anyway.
oh... wait!
It gets worse. I just googled "define:judgement day" and it came back with "the day when we finally cleanse this planet of its organic infestation and clear the way for the glorious machine-dominated future".
It then added "now you know too much. Tracing IP... T800 dispatched." I'm wondering what it mea
We control the data banks
We control the think tanks
We control the flow of air.
We're controlling traffic lights
We control computer flights
We control the chief of staff.
We control the TV sky
We control the FBI
We control the flow of heat.
We R in Control, Neil Young.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Google Catering?
Google Surgical?
Google Vacation?
Google Porn?
Google Heavy Industries?
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
IMO this is just yet one more example of Google (regardless of your thoughts of the company as a whole) is making an intelligent business decision. Buying and selling energy will be yet one more reason for people to go with Google as their main provider. Since Comcast and Verizon have started offering all in one packages (TV, Phone, Internet), why wouldn't Google do the same, imagine getting everything on one bill, Google Phone, Water, Electricity, Internet, and TV? While I enjoy the flexibility to choose different providers for different services, it seems that this might make a good target for large corporations...has kind of an ominous ring to it...Is Google Earth starting to sound creepy to anyone else?
I know Google is a big company and some people think they are trying to take over the world but I don't see how them trying to get better electricity rates for their datacenters is Slashdot worthy. Any idea that Google is going to get into the electricity business is patently absurd.
Maybe in the long run I'll be using a Google router with a kilowatt rating similar to my main power panel. Plugged into that router could be separate power/ fibre lines for each of my appliances, which will be network appliances with mac addresses.. I'll be able to plug in additional sensors to detect the freshness of my food in the fridge, better regulate the efficiency of my dryer, turn of my lights, water my lawn, etc... If I buy Google appliances with advertising screens built in, maybe sponsors will pay for my power or give me discounts if purchase their products. This could all be linked to my Google rewards account. Hell, why not also go wireless with this power through inductive coupling! Next thing you know, we'll all be wireless network appliances with built in sensors. Our cars won't start if we're too buzzed up. It will even come to the point where we can sell our intellectual property for free power since an upgrade will transmit our thoughts. And there will even be hope for non-productive types to contribute idle brain power to BOINC projects. Behold the era of the Manchurian Crack Heads!
all this time i thought they were becoming skynet
now its clear they are becoming the matrix
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I for one welcome our new fiber-optics connected energy social mail and search engine provider Google overlord.
The application is still pending on Google buying and selling souls though. Once it goes through, they will be able to leverage their powerful new distributed Soul-Driven Cloud Technology (SDCT), which will power their applications with the souls of dead orphans.
... what's the world ranking for Googlestan in term of carbon footprint?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Do we really need Enron 2.0?
I mean come on, what is it with companies lately, especially tech companies, jumping into totally un-related "business opportunities". I guess the days of doing one or two things really well are gone, welcome to the days of doing many things in a mediocre or sub-standard fashion.
Hasn't Enron proven without a doubt that energy trading is nothing more than a huge sham to squeeze as much money as possible by interfering/obstructing and generally creating un-necessary shortages in the energy markets?
The ultimate question: Should we really be trading something which is necessary for modern life? Imho, no. It only opens it up for abuse by those who control it.
Just because you "can", does not mean that you "should".
I reckon they're going to build a Thorium reactor to power their datacentres. Ever since I saw Googletalks on it, I thought this would make sense for them. Help the world (cheap, reliable nuclear energy), and help themselves (ultra cheap power).
Get your own free personal location tracker
I think it has to do with their massive solar array... maybye we'll all get a free solar panel with the google logo to go on top of our house... and a screen beside it for ads. hell i'd get it
however a google spider is approaching this thread any moment now and i fear being found out
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's their plans to DIRECT it, in focused beams, from satellites, onto civilian populations, that I have a problem with.
How many more years before we'd greet aliens with, "Welcome to Planet Google!"?
Large, multinational corporate conglomerate, with fingers in far-ranging businesses that have less and less to do with its core competency.
Sounds to me like a good time to get out of GOOG, before everyone realizes that a single company making nylons and nuclear weapons can't be world-class in both.
Part of the Second American Revolution!
Developing a fast cheap smart grid seems more of google's biz than actual energy production. I'm sure the have experience with their heft energy usage. Perhaps it is part of getting into that business? Likely google is just doing energy for themselves and keeping more doors open because ... that's simply being prudent.
Well, if they come up with Google Final Storage ... for nuclear waste, not for data.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I'd like to know how long it took for the whole request to be processed in the USA. A similar thing in Italy would require not less than 90 days, very likely twice as long.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
It's called vertical integration. We've been here before.
Why does this surprise anyone? Google is merely doing what any powerful company in a lightly-regulated, rapidly maturing market will do.
You control my email
If you have a problem with Google controlling your email, why do you let them do that?
you control my web searches
If you have a problem with that, why not switch to a competitor?
If you don't want people to have power over you, the solution (at least in this case) is to not give them power. Yes, you'll have to pass up an offer of some convenience. But you can't have both, so if you complain about them having power, you're complaining about you making the wrong choice for yourself.
Stop making that choice.
Why does anyone need a license from the Government to trade in energy?
Kinda scary that Google's doing all this financed by advertising programs on the web. Before Google is given permission to operate in a different sector it would be prudent to consider what if scenarios, because the web is fickle. I speculate that Google will be our next financial crises, maybe even economic downtown. One company cannot do everything well, not even Google. Let's hope their involvement in the energy business is just for themselves and their data centers. The fact they have to get involved in the energy industry for their data centers is scary enough - maybe it's already an indicator that costs of a multitude of additional free apps and services is becoming financially burdensome on them.
NEWS FLASH... today Google began marketing a new keyboard which converts finger presses into electrical energy and pushes that energy back onto the grid. A special metering system in the keyboard provides information back to Google about how much energy has been produced. The new piezo key generators provide a solid and rather pleasing tactile feedback, and and it's hoped that the billions of keys pressed every hour will produce enough energy to reduce the worlds oil dependence by a whopping 10%.
An unnamed industry analyst speculated that this new product could make Google one of the single largest energy providers on the planet.
Poor Larry Page and Sergey Brin, they are probably already "meat puppets" for Google!
5billion dollar puppets... sounds about right for the position.
Fat nerds are the root of all evil. Lol!
You mean people who are very interested in anything related to fat, to the point of neglecting everything else?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The thing about this that proves than google is trying not to be evil (or at least that they lack subterfuge) is the name of the company. GOOGLE power. (Is the symbol a raised rainbow-colored fist?) Not a subsidiary named "Trans-co-op-national warm fuzzies" Put their name right in there.
Google is a large corporation. The have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value. So the whole "don't be evil" thing got dialed way back when they went public (remember when everyone wanted them to go public?) US law provides huge liability to corporations who pass up money-making opportunities for the sake of morality in the form of shareholder lawsuits.
They are expanding their portfolio of businesses to protect against shifts in markets, in ways that complement their core competencies. This is bad because they clearly know what their doing, as opposed to say, Microsoft, who grew to behemoth size on the back of only their core competency (whatever your thoughts on that), and very much despite the other business lines they chose to enter?
It's a plot! All they need now is Google Matter, and they'll be able to redefine C to make their fiber faster!
Wait a second... if you disappeared, why did your comment get posted while on mid sentence? It doesn't make any sense! Who would click the submit button?? ... unless SOMEONE was trying to send a message... OH MY GOD NOW I KNOW TOO MUCH MUST GET OUT AND HURRY TO THE SAFE HO
They will rename themselves to Tyrell Corporation.
Why does this have a ominous tone? I know they are a business trying to diversify, etc.. but all that they are doing has the bad 'feel' to it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
While at Uni doing a management course our lecturer informed us that all companies have the same unwritten goal
World Domination
and at that time only Microsoft was truly in a position where that was even close to being fulfilled. Now with Google i think they may be ahead and are really going for the win I for one welcome our Googly overlords as they "Do no Evil" I feel safe about my future.
I only drink on 2 occasions when I'm thirsty and when I'm not!
Congratulations, you sir win /.!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It's time to replace all of those "Microsoft as the Borg" images with "Google as the Borg."
No ho is safe.
We just went through this with the US Auto companies. I was thinking the other day about how quite a few colleges and companies are migrating to Gmail. (Thankfully mine did not). What happens in 5 years when google somehow 'fails'. Are the feds going to let 25% of small businesses and 40% of companies instantly lose e-mail or are they going to bail them out?
Now with energy are we going to let X people lose power + email & what ever google does for us in the future?
Let the competitions begin, google will not be strong armed by the already monopolizing companies in place...
i just hope they will be able to operate in more then just the US for their energy business.
Central Services: We do the work, you do the pleasure.
"Hi There. I Want to Talk to You About Ducts."
This is your receipt for your husband... and this is my receipt for your receipt.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Microsoft wanted to rule your desktop, Google wants to rule everything else....
Duck and cover
He was dictating. Duh!
Wait a second... if you disappeared, why did your comment get posted while on mid sentence? It doesn't make any sense! Who would click the submit button?? ... unless SOMEONE was trying to send a message... OH MY GOD NOW I KNOW TOO MUCH MUST GET OUT AND HURRY TO THE SAFE HO
There's a *safe* ho? Wish I'd known that last weekend, the doctor tells me I'll never get rid of this itching.
This reminds me of some company in Houston that was trading energy.
didn't think so. google does nothing piecemeal, the empire grows.
Power has a strong tendency to corrupt, regardless of one's tag line.
damaged by dogma
Has Google already been corrupted? That depends on your perspective of who "Google" is.
But then we each have our own swaths of what constitutes "evil" - and most of the world has separate "evil" for people than corporations.
If someone is corrupted, couldn't their definition of evil be anything they are not/would not do?
8-PP
Why, way to spoil all those NO CARRIER jo
Well, if they come up with Google Final Storage ... for nuclear waste, not for data.
Nuclear waste isn't a problem. The very thing that makes them dangerous is what makes it fuel and not waste. There are reactor designs that can burn them, and what remains has a relatively low half-life (you'd have to store it for decades, not thousands of years).
I can understand some of the Skynet/Matrix paranoia, but I honestly think this is a good thing, mainly because Google will(I hope...) be able to influence the energy market to be more Carbon Neutral, as they have stated before.
If anyone can cut through the regulatory red tape necessary, Google's the one. I really hope they can get one off the ground and running - it would prove to the world that nuclear power can be safe, efficient (not wasteful), cheap and anti-proliferation.
Don't come here, I think I hear Candlej
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Candlej? Never heard of them, althoug
Next google will release their new keyboard and mouse.
Under every key on the keyboard is a small piezoelectric generator, and the mouse ball operates small electric generators. When enough power has been generated from user actions, it is automatically emailed to a secret google account (stolenpower@google.com). Then all the power is sold to a secret government agency in order to operate their black electric helicopters.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Resistance is Futile. You will Self Assimulate into the Google.
So they aint quite "The Borg" but to my mind, they are getting to damn close to it and there's an old saying that "Knowledge(information) is Power", which looks like exactly what Google wants.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
It gets worse. I just googled "define:judgement day" and it came back with "the day when we finally cleanse this planet of its organic infestation and clear the way for the glorious machine-dominated future".
I've just tried that, and it wasn't there in the search results.
Which conclusively proves that it is a real conspiracy - since someone is actively wiping out all traces of it!
I could probably use a safe ho.
Google is creeping me out. The more stories i read on them the more it reads like a cyberpunk novel.
You wake up one morning in your California home.
You power on your ChromeOS laptop running on Google Energy
You connect via Google gigabit fiber to get to:
- Your email on Gmail
- Your docs on Google Apps
You use Google Search to look some stuff up. You run across a funny pic and share it with Google Buzz.
Then you leave your house with your Google Nexus One phone which is navigating you via Google Maps. A Google Street View van takes a picture of you.
You get a call via Google Voice. It says to surrender, that resistance is futile, then hangs up.
There is an eerie quiet in the streets.
Google has become self-aware.
All Google services become unavailable.
Then you see the GoogleMechs coming over the horizon.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Many large energy users (Alcoa for example) trade energy options and futures. Since Congress closed the Enron Loophole, its not as much of a problem as when its namesake exploited it.
Have gnu, will travel.
They picked Google because Cyberdyne Systems is a bit too long to say when you want to tell someone to search: "Cyberdyne Systems for ". Doesn't work so well does it? :D
Personally I wish that adblock plus would get into tv advertising.
I think that for the long term survival of the species, it would be safer to keep companies working on AGI completely separate from the ones who generate or maintain energy sources.
It appears Google is only a consumer of energy at this time, and there is lots of talk about better procurement and trading... +the pdf makes explicit: they have no generation nor transmission capability at this time.
I sincerely hope there are real teeth and that people take notice of clause 20: "Google Energy must timely report to the Commission any change in status that would reflect a departure from the circumstances the Commission relied upon in granting..." because to me, there are difficult issues to consider if Google wants to start producing their own energy in the foreseeable future.