Google (GOOG) acquired popular travel guide brand Frommer’s earlier this week in a move that is believed to help the search giant. Google has already announced plans to partner the Frommer’s segment with its recently acquired restaurant rating company Zagat.
Frommer’s was founded in 1957 by Arthur Frommer. Frommer wrote a guide book about European destinations for army soldiers. His guidebook was then turned into the first … Read the rest
The headline says it all. Shares of Yelp Inc (YELP) may be on the verge of a technical breakout from a bullish triangle formation. More on that in a bit. First let me be clear that from a fundamentals and business model standpoint I flat out don’t like Yelp in the least bit. For one, I like companies that aren’t burning through cash. Yelp continues to grow and as they grow, the losses pile up. … Read the rest
Google (GOOG) announced on their official blog last night that they are investing in the development of a major transmission backbone for wind farms off the Mid Atlantic coast which will stretch 350 miles from NJ to Virginia and have the capacity to connect 6000MW in offshore wind energy.. enough to serve nearly 2 million homes.
The Mid-Atlantic region is well suited to offshore wind energy with 60,000 MW of potential in relatively shallow waters … Read the rest
In a piece in the New York Times over the weekend, they pull back the curtains on an exciting experiment between Google (GOOG) and Toyota (TM) – self driving cars. Google has been testing self driving Prius’s in secret for some time which use AI software, cameras and GPS to try to mimic human driving.
According to the article, seven cars have driven 1000 miles completely autonomously and another 140K miles with some human intervention. … Read the rest
Treehugger has an excellent post up that looks at Google’s PowerMeter and whether or not it can replace the efforts of utilities to install meters and connect them to a smart grid. Google’s PowerMeter devices are giving consumers the power to manage their own energy use independent of local utilities, meaning that you don’t have to wait for your local power company to start installing smart meters to get an in-depth view of your energy … Read the rest
Google just announced that it is investing, via tax equity investments, $38.8 million in 2 wind farms in North Dakota: Ashtabula 2, a 120 MW facility and Wilton Wind 2, a 49.5 MW facility. The wind farms were developed by NextEra Energy Resources, a subsidiary of FPL Group.
In a blog post, Rick Needham, Google’s Green Business Operations Manager explained the investment:
“Smart capital includes not only these early-stage company investments, but also dedicated … Read the rest
By Nick Hodge of GreenChipStocks.com
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You can often get a pretty good pulse on emerging cleantech themes by reading the pages of the Green Chip Review.
Going over my articles from the past two months, I noticed a clear trend: water and smart grid are the themes of the day.
And it’s not hard to see why.
The American Southwest and Southeast are three years into the … Read the rest
There’s a good piece over at Portfolio.com about Google’s green energy initiatives and collaboration with GE. Google’s goal is to make every home energy efficient so that appliances know when to power up and down while heating and cooling respond automatically to the prices in energy. Before that can happen big time upgrades must happen in the transmission lines which are horribly outdated and inefficient.
Google aims to do with energy what it’s done for … Read the rest
Google announced yesterday that the company is partnering with GE to make clean energy solutions available for consumers. Through this partnership, Google and GE will try to improve the existing electric infrastructure, focusing on creating a "smart grid" through upgrading power generation, distribution and transmission. The companies will also collaborate on advanced energy technologies, including charging for plug-in cars and geothermal.
According to the fact sheet about the partnership released by Google, GE and … Read the rest