SAN FRANCISCO – Google
has abandoned an ambitious project to make renewable energy cheaper
than coal, the latest target of Chief Executive Larry Page's moves to
focus the Internet giant on fewer efforts.
Google said on Tuesday that it was pulling
the plug on seven projects, including Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal
as well as a Wikipedia-like online encyclopedia service known as Knol.
The plans, which Google announced on its
corporate blog, represent the third so-called "spring cleaning"
announcement that Google has made since Google co-founder Page took the
reins in April.
The changes come as Google is facing stiff competition in mobile computing and social networking from Apple and Facebook, and as some investors have groused about rising spending at the world's No.1 Internet search company.
"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 into our broader product efforts, and
ending several which have shown us a different path forward," wrote
Google Senior Vice President of Operations Urs Holzle in the blog post.
Google said that it believed other institutions were better positioned to take its renewable energy efforts "to the next level."
Google began making investments and doing
research into technology to drive down the price of renewable energy in
2007, with a particular focus on solar power technology.
In 2009, the company's so-called Green
Energy Czar, Bill Weihl, told Reuters that he expected to demonstrate
within a few years working technology that could produce renewable
energy at a cheaper price than coal.
"It is even odds, more or less," Weihl said at the time. "In three years, we could have multiple megawatts of plants out there."
A Google spokesman said that Weihl had left Google earlier this month.
Google noted in its blog post that it would
continue efforts to generate "cleaner, more efficient energy," including
procuring renewable energy for its data centers.
Among the other projects included in
Tuesday's "spring cleaning" were Google Knol, Google Search Timeline,
Google Gear, Google Friend Connect, Google Bookmarks Lists and Google
Wave, an ill-fated social networking and communication service that
Google had previously said it would cease developing.
Google said that in December its email and
calendar applications will no longer work with Gears technology, which
allows Google's software to work when not connected to the Internet.
Google said it is working to create offline capabilities into HTML5
technology instead.
Google Friend Connect, which allows website
publishers to add social features to their sites, will be retired in
March for all non-Blogger websites, Google said. It suggested that
websites use its Google+ social network instead.
Earlier this year, Google said it would
"wind down" Google Labs, a website that offered public access to
experimental Google products, as well as terminating products that let
consumers monitor their home energy consumption and keep track of their
personal health records.
Shares of Google, which finished Tuesday's
regular trading session down 94 cents, were up 86 cents at $580.86 in
after hours trading.
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