Google's Energy Addiction

Harper's has a little piece about Google's energy habits: Keyword: Evil -- Google's addiction to cheap electricity.

Fake Steve Jobs gives us a summary:

I was gratified to see this article in Harper's which describes the obscene amount of energy Google eats up with its data centers ("a new heavy industry, an energy glutton that is only growing hungrier") and the slick trickery that Google employed in Oregon so it could keep getting us taxpayers to pay part of their electric bills. The Bush administration wanted to privatize a utility. Google and a friendly congressman persuaded Bush not to do it so they could keep getting below-market-rate electricity -- ie, electricity subsidized by us, the taxpayers.

Starting to see the pattern here? We subsidize Google's electric bills so they can run their giant data centers. But those data centers cause global warming. So Google and the VCs create new companies to solve global warming. We subsidize those companies too. Google and the VCs get rich. We get a nice card at Christmas, and a free Gmail account. Right on, dudes. Don't be evil.

Link: Larry Page, friend of the environment.