{"id":1838,"date":"2010-10-12T11:17:37","date_gmt":"2010-10-12T15:17:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonapollovoss.local\/?p=1838"},"modified":"2018-08-17T14:10:31","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T18:10:31","slug":"go-google-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/2010\/10\/12\/go-google-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Go Google, go"},"content":{"rendered":"

That scion of the Internet has announced that it is making another investment outside of its core business.\u00a0 I am of course talking about Google.\u00a0 The Google investment in focus today is in an offshore windfarm in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S.\u00a0 The project will stretch 350 miles from New Jersey to Virginia and will connect together 6,000 megawatts of energy generated by a massive windfarm that will be 60% of wind power generation in the U.S. Google is financing the underwater cabling at a price of approximately $5 billion.<\/span><\/p>\n

This project takes care of many problems simultaneously.\u00a0 First, more renewable energy.\u00a0 Second, the NIMBY – not in my back yard – problem; that is: many feel that wind turbines are ugly and they don’t want to see them in their back yards.\u00a0 Third, more energy for a very thirsty United States.\u00a0 Fourth, siting the windfarm in a place where there is lots of wind.\u00a0 What was missing was a way to deliver the power from offshore to onshore.\u00a0 That’s where Google comes in.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am cheering Google’s choice, though this violates an ironclad business school principle: only invest in what you know.\u00a0 In this case, Google is not a power company, it’s supposedly just an Internet search engine company.\u00a0 However, I think that way of thinking about things is bogus.\u00a0 Businesses are basically what I used to be: portfolio managers.\u00a0 They have capital at their disposal and they invest it in the highest and best returning asset that they can and hope to earn excellent, risk-adjusted returns.\u00a0 Power is very much in Google’s interest since it only exists at the good graces of electricity.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am also hailing Google for its choice because I feel that Google is a business that serves as a model for what future companies should be: answerable to all constituencies, not just shareholders.\u00a0 In this instance, just about everybody in the United States uses Google and benefits from Google.\u00a0 And most of us want a cleaner, more sustainable, energy future.\u00a0 So good for Google to fund not just what adheres to business school sensibilities, but investment and ethical sensibilities, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

I would love to see more businesses branch outside of their supposed “core” businesses and make more radical choices based on a more conscious<\/strong> understanding of just how they interrelate to everything else and everyone else on the planet.\u00a0 Amen!<\/span><\/p>\n

Jason<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That scion of the Internet has announced that it is making another investment outside of its core business.\u00a0 I am of course talking about Google.\u00a0 The Google investment in focus today is in an offshore windfarm in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S.\u00a0 The project will stretch 350 miles from New Jersey to Virginia and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}