Google Inc has officially determined that their company will not be pursuing a project designed to create renewable energy that is considerably cheaper than coal. Chief executive Larry Page has decided that the internet giant will focus on fewer plans and efforts in the forseeable future.
The renewable energy project is accordingly not the only plan that Google has recently ditched, officially dropping 7 different projects including a Wikipedia like encyclopedia service that would have been called Knol. These decisions all come as part of an effort for “spring cleaning.”
So why the change in ideas? Because lately, Google has faced especially harsh competition from both Apple Inc and Facebook, falling from previous ranks as the #1 Internet search company.
In an official blog post, Google Senior Vice President of Operations Urs Holzle wrote, “To recap, we’re in the process of shutting down a number of products which haven’t had the impact we’d hoped for, integrating others as features in our broader product efforts, and ending several which have shown us a different path forward.”
Google has stated that executives believe that there are other companies more qualified to take on this particular project who would have outdone any efforts from Google at this time.
Google started investing in renewable energy and taking those efforts to the “next level” in 2007, and have since invested million in research on solar power technology. In 2009, Google’s official Green energy exec told Reuters that he expected that Google could produce a sustainable technology within a few years at a cheaper price as compared to coal. He still seems to view the halt as a waste.
Google has since announced that as of December, email and calendar applications will no longer work with Gears technology. In other words, you will no longer be able to access your information offline. Instead, google is working on offline capabilities with HTML5 technology.
Google will also “wind down” Google Labs according to reports, which offered public access to Google products and personal health records put on Google. Considerable efforts will be made to fix any applicable problems, ideally making Google a bigger competitor among search engine companies once again.