How stupid can one market analyist be? Well, I think you would have ask Jordan Rohan of RBC Capital Markets for that answer. Mr. Rohan, in a NY Times article about Google‘s attempt to push the football forward in the world of renewable energy, says that
“My first reaction when I read about this was, ‘Is this a joke?’” Rohan expands:
“The only positive byproduct of this project that would be anything other than environmental,†he said, “is that it might make Google managers and executives even prouder of the fact that they work there, and it may help retain key employees who think their goal is to do good in the world. But I’m really stretching.â€
Mr. Rohan (and others), Google isn’t just an advertising company, it’s a computing company. And to compute, you need computers, and computers need energy, and that energy is an expense that keeps increasing. What if, I don’t know, Google could decrease its energy costs by 30%? Or even 10%? Would that put Google at an even greater competitive advantage, decreasing its fixed costs? What if Google then either sold its excess energy capacity or licensed its renewable energy technology? That might bring in a few bucks!
Hasn’t everyone read this article about the Google data center in The Dalle, Oregon? They sited the data center on the Columbia River, next a hydroelectric power plant, so they could get the cheapest power available. Imagine if Google wasn’t restricted by such considerations and could site data centers wherever they wanted, bringing their own renewable energy creation with them?