Green Google?

Sustainability and CO2 emissions are often related to paper but almost never to Internet search. A Harvard graduate student - Wissner-Gross - recently opened the discussion about how green the web is. He claimed that every web search creates between 5-10 grams of CO2 from the power required to keep the servers going. Google reacted immediately by saying that its emissions are only .02 grams. Gartner, industry analysts, calculated that the global IT industry contributes 2 to 3 % of global carbon emissions, which is as much as the world's airlines. Another calculation indicated that maintaining an avatar in Second Life requires as much electricity as used by an average Brazilian! With growing online use and time spend with the computer this figure will further increase.

Google selling newspapers

Google announced last year a test involving 50 US newspapers and a limited number of advertisers to bid online for advertising space. Today the service called Google Print Ads is available for all advertisers and includes over 225 newspapers (combined circulation of nearly 30 million). The Google sales pitch demonstrates the commitment to integrated media campaigns as it presents 4 reasons to consider newspapers as a "important component of any advertiser's media mix". Newspapers give advertisers significant local reach, they reach an attractive demographic audience, they are a key resource for shopping information that drives offline and online purchases and finally newspapers are relevant throughout the entire purchase cycle.
It will be very interesting to see what Google's initiative will do to the top-line and bottom-line results of the participating newspapers. And also to the reaction of the traditional traders in ad space; the media agencies.

Google Master Plan

In November I wrote about the movie made by The Museum of Media History on the impact of Google on the online and off-line media. Two students from the University of Ulm (Germany) have now produced a movie called the Master Plan, about the power of Google. It is a sceptic view of Google' mission of making the world a better place. Expressed with nicely made graphics and a compelling story.