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Google Funds Free EV Community Shuttles in Mountain View, CA

Leave a Comment / Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy, Local News, Sustainability / By

(Originally published on Planetsave.com) Four new 100% electric community shuttle buses have hit the road in the beautiful Silicon Valley city of Mountain View, California. The four electric shuttles are free to the public, thanks to Google, and are equipped with seating for 16 passengers, a wheelchair lift, space for two wheelchairs, Wi-Fi connectivity, and bicycle …

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Why is Google investing so heavily in renewables?

1 Comment / Conservation, Corporate Politics, Corporate Social Responsibility / By

With concerns over the wider environment growing on an almost daily basis, the pressure is increasing on some of the world’s largest companies, particularly those in the technology sector to clean up their act. Google is one firm that seem to have paid attention to their carbon footprint, and have apparently invested huge amounts of …

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Google Lowers Data Center Eco-Footprint with Ocean Water Cooling

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It’s not often I hear positive environmental news from data centers and others involved in e-media, but this one caught my eye. Google has announced that it’s using sea water to cool its new data center in Hamina, Finland. It’s even produced a video that explains how it works.  The water flows in through granite …

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Google Broadband: Will They Change the World Again?

2 Comments / Inspiring Ideas, Technology / By

If Google indeed wants to “do no evil” perhaps it should stick to what it does best, grow and improve it’s search and more generally increase access to information on the internet. Obviously a statement like that is not exactly a stretch as companies that focus on their core competencies are often ones that succeed …

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The Failure of Google’s “Do No Evil” Approach to Social Innovation

2 Comments / Corporate Social Responsibility, Philanthropy / By

Yesterday’s extensive feature in The New York Times business section on Google.org’s failure to match its own lofty social innovation goals is a must read for anyone interested in the intersection of philanthropy, corporate social responsibility and information technology. The piece chronicles Google’s philanthropic endeavors since the firm issued its inaugural IPO in 2004 when …

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Google Makes Big Investment in Wind-Energy

1 Comment / Energy, Investing, News, Sustainable Development / By

Back in May Google Inc. invested $38.8 million in two North Dakota wind farms. This was the company’s first investment in a utility-scale wind-energy project. Google’s green business operations manager, Rick Needham, said then that Google is “aiming to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy—in a way that makes good business sense, too.” Yesterday it …

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Inspired Economist Pick of the Week

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  This column highlights the top economic stories of the week. For a while it looked like Google might actually bailout the newspaper industry by buying a stake in newspapers that have been struggling with debt and declining ad revenues.  However, it appears that this plan ha been called off. Meanwhile, the Treasury department has …

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How Technology is Helping Reduce Fossil Fuel Consumption

Leave a Comment / Innovation and Design / By

For years, green activists were “anti-technology”, claiming that technological advances were largely responsible for the polluted state of Mother Earth. This was a fair claim, as yesterday’s technologies only looked at the bottom line, and not the resulting mess. In today’s reality, the words “green” and “technology” no longer constitute an oxymoron, as technologists have turned their attention to cleaning up the mess previous generations have made.

Does The Credit Crunch Help Or Hurt The Issue of Climate Change?

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Whether the global credit crunch will actually help or hurt the search for solutions to climate change is becoming a debatable issue.

Currently, the issue of climate change appears to be on the back burner as governments are focused on the financial problems that have shaken the global economy. It could be several months before politicians return to focusing their attention on long term problems like global warming.