Arte-non-Vi

Category: Google

  • A Google Green

    A Google Green

    Tipping points are not always obvious, this one may be.

    Two announcements this week, juxtaposed. Infrastructure Victoria’s 30-Year Strategy and Google’s move on renewable energy in 2017.

    Technology companies now account for about 2% of total Global Carbon emissions, that rivals the aviation industry. Let’s not even consider the amount of fresh water they require, that’s another article…

    Consider that in 2015,  Google bought 5.7 terawatt hours (TWh) of renewable electricity, a little less than the 7.6TWh generated by all of the UK’s solar panels that year. The majority of the power comes from windfarms in the US. [Source: The Guardian]

    Google’s data centres and the offices for its 60,000 staff will be powered entirely by renewable energy from next year, in what the company has called a “landmark moment”.

    Google is already the world’s biggest corporate buyer of renewable electricity, last year buying 44% of its power from wind and solar farms. Now it will be 100%, and an executive said it would not rule out investing in nuclear power in the future, too.

    Url Hölzle, Senior Vice President of Technical Infrastructure for google said recently:

    I’m thrilled to announce that in 2017 Google will reach 100% renewable energy for our global operations — including both our data centers and offices. This is a huge milestone. We were one of the first corporations to create large-scale, long-term contracts to buy renewable energy directly; we signed our first agreement to purchase all the electricity from a 114-megawatt wind farm in Iowa, in 2010. Today, we are the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable power, with commitments reaching 2.6 gigawatts (2,600 megawatts) of wind and solar energy. That’s bigger than many large utilities and more than twice as much as the 1.21 gigawatts it took to send Marty McFly back in time.

     

    US Corporate Energy Purchase
    [Source: Environment Google 2016 ]

    He points out a simple business imperative:

    The science tells us that tackling climate change is an urgent global priority. We believe the private sector, in partnership with policy leaders, must take bold steps and that we can do so in a way that leads to growth and opportunity. And we have a responsibility to do so — to our users and the environment.

     

    Links

  • Project Wing

    Project Wing is a Google[x] project that is developing a delivery system that uses self-flying vehicles. As part of their research, they built a vehicle and traveled to Queensland for some test flights.

    Interesting tech but…..

    Yes, the obligatory comments will come……

  • The Story of Send

    Google has posted an interesting [and fun] run-down of the energy pathway of an email through a well crafted online animation/cartoon.

    The environmental impact on growing data centres is very real and the question of sustainability is a strategic and governance challenge that cannot be ignored. The context of the current debate about carbon-pricing and mechanisms for capture and/or attenuation of future impacts is very real for these global companies.

    The Story of Send

    Links:

  • Google Earth’s Virtual Prado Museum

    Google Earth’s Virtual Prado Museum.

    Madrid’s Prado Museum has long been a destination for art lovers. In the company of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Louvre Museum in France, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Prado is home to countless masterpieces of western art. Unfortunately, the options for viewing its contents have always been either hopping a plane to Madrid, or thumbing through printed reproductions that pale in comparison to the original works. Luckily, there’s now a third option with Google Earth’s Prado Museum feature, which offers ultra high resolution photos of 14 of the museum’s masterpieces.

    While the project isn’t an acceptable substitute for seeing the works in person, it is an exceptional upgrade to the sorts of reproductions to which we’ve become accustomed. The images of the 14 works, which include Velázquez’s Las Meninas, Goya’s The Third of May 1808, Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, and Fra Angelico’s Annunciation, are 14,000 million pixels in size – that’s 1,400 times larger than an image that could be captured by a standard 10 megapixel camera!

  • Sun, 28 Aug 2005 04:23:34 GMT

    Dave Winer comments on the growth of podcasting and the potential ‘googlisation’ of the new delivery of content.

    I am not so sure they should dismiss Apple so readily. I know Adam Curry can produce for audiences but I think Apple has a much bigger plan/strategy.  If I knew what it was, I would be a wealthy man….

    Dave says:

    A picture named cellSpeaking of the online music biz, here’s why Kleiner-Perkins invested in Podshow. First, a caveat, this is just tea-leave-reading and wild speculation. OK, as reported here in June, Google has an iTunes clone in the works. Probably works great with cell phones, unlike iTunes itself which works great with iPods (of course). KP has the inside track because they have a Google board seat, and Doerr is architecting the whole thing anyway. Enter Podshow, which gets a sweet deal with Google to provide the first apps and content for their iTunes me-too, all the while in bed with Uncle Steve on iTunes. Instant mini-bubble, Podshow goes public, Adam and Ron retire to Miami, and KP pockets the profits.

    Source: Scripting News