What Would Google Do_ - Jeff Jarvis [86]
Then I went up the mountain to hear the Google team—founders Page and Brin with Google.org executive director Larry Brilliant. The contrast was stark. To summarize if not oversimplify their vantage points: Where Gore demands taxes and regulation, the Google team proposes invention and investment. Gore and company want to raise the cost of carbon—the cost of polluting—whereas the Google team wants to lower the cost of energy. I’m a bit unfair to Gore, for he would argue that the proceeds of his taxes would fund technology development. But Google doesn’t need tax dollars. If it were a country, its $20 billion revenue would rank it about 80th in gross domestic product. It can invest in energy research on its own.
Still, we see different worldviews at work. “You can’t succeed just out of conservation because then you won’t have economic development,” Brilliant said. “Find a way to make electricity—not to cut back on it but to have more of it than you ever dreamed of.” More power than you ever dreamed of. Create and manage abundance rather than control scarcity—as ever, that is the Google worldview. Whereas Gore talks about what we shouldn’t do, Google talks about what we can do. There we see the contrast between the politician’s brain and the engineer’s. Google people start with a problem and look for a solution. They identify a need, find an opportunity, and then systemically, logically, and aggressively attack it with innovation.
Page explained that there is a market now for green energy at 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. Some people and companies want to buy it, though it is expensive, because they want to do good or need good PR. But the true market cost of energy is still far below that. Google.org wants to find a way to produce renewable power at three cents per kilowatt-hour, cheaper than coal, which not only gives them a good deal but also shuts down dirty coal plants.
If it succeeds, the foundation would change Google’s business and other entire industries, starting with autos. With energy that cheap, Google.org envisions cars plugged into the power grid, solving the problem of pollution from burning gasoline and changing the political balance of oil power (though they point out that the power grid is in woeful need of an upgrade). Google is also supporting an electric-car initiative called RechargeIT, which is trying to accelerate the adoption of plug-in hybrid cars. As a demonstration, Google is converting its own fleet of cars to modified, plug-in Toyota Prius hybrids. Google set up web pages for every car to display data about its energy efficiency—we know how Google loves data. Those cars are plugged into solar-powered charging stations on Google’s campus, where the company was producing 1.6 megawatts in solar power by 2008. “It’s been great,” Brin said. “It produced shade. It reduced cost.” Google created a platform for electric-car devotees to make YouTube videos and place them on a Google map, demonstrating popular support and demand for the cars. Google clearly believes it can help create a market for plug-in cars—and why not? It has created new markets for technology and advertising.
Brin said at Davos that Google has an advantage over incumbent oil companies because it does not have a legacy energy business to protect from cannibalization. Still, he was asked, aren’t his shareholders going to have a problem with this quixotic investment? The investment is moderate, Page replied, and the payoff is great.
Brin said the foundation’s research is concentrating on three energy sources—solar-thermal, deep geothermal, and high-altitude wind—in addition to photovoltaic power. Wind is already as cheap as coal, he explained, but it’s intermittent and unreliable on the ground. That’s why they