First; Unlike the Internet where an excess of users causes the response to slow down, electricity requires the identical number of electrons to be created as delivered – at any instant in time – failure to do this causes the system to collapse, and the unintended consequences of the grid being overloaded or underloaded in death and chaos.

The grid requires a higher standard of regulation in the interests of all.

Second; the life of technology on the Internet is months to years. The life cycle of equipment for the grid is in generation, to 40 years.

You cannot roll out electrical equipment like you can telecoms.

Third; The internet is relatively nice to have compared to electricity on which humanity depends today

I encourage all thinking Internet parallels to the grid, to remember the not parallels also!

The response is in reverse. First, a Smart Grid delivery only utility should have the primary responsibility to deliver electrity.

Second, Google then should not have the knowledge to control energy, but be secondary to delivery. Google may develop its business model innovations to particpate in the business architecture competition as a Second Generation Retailer with other potetial retailers like INTEL, Microsoft, etc.

http://www.foet.org/lectures/lecture-hydrogen-economy.html

“The same design principles and smart technologies that made possible the internet, and vast distributed global communication networks, will be used to reconfigure the world’s power grids so that people can produce renewable energy and share it peer-to-peer, just like they now produce and share information, creating a new, decentralized form of energy use. We need to envision a future in which millions of individual players can collect, produce and store locally generated renewable energy in their homes, offices, factories, and vehicles, and share their power generation with each other across a Europe-wide intelligent intergrid. (Hydrogen is a universal storage medium for intermittent renewable energies; just as digital is a universal storage mechanism for text, audio, video, data and other forms of media).”

Moderator – can you correct – readers please note.

2nd last paragraph should read “If we want Google to have the knowledge to control energy, I suggest we do “NOT NOT” let them also have the incentive to deliver it!

The quality products lost, innovation was stifled, now Windows 7 (5 years later) has had to get better – but what a way to learn!

So when will we learn from history?

When will we not repeat the same mistakes?

Quotation by John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, first Baron Acton (1834–1902). The historian and moralist, who was otherwise known simply as Lord Acton, expressed this opinion in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887:

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

If we think that Microsoft had control of us through the operating system that ran our PC, take a step back and think of the control Google has over us in being the channel for the information we receive.

You can go all the way back to the 3rd century and the church to look at the abuses of power by the control of information. They are called the dark ages for a reason.

Technically, we have some safety in the fact that Google can no more tweak a page and the rules of where it will appear in their search rankings, than I can. But, lets be clear, 95% of the traffic we get from people using a search engine to inquire about energy saving, is from Google.

Google has control, of that there is no doubt! All we are discussing is; how they use it, will they use it, and if it will be abused?

Control of information is then potential to control a society.

It does not matter how it came into being and what the motives are. It is an awesome power to have!

This is DANGEROUS indeed!

The issue is not in the founders, from all I read I believe that they have the best of intentions, to sincerely do no evil. I applaud them in this intent.

Further, I have seen examples of their refusal to engage in altering information, even when it might seem they should, in the knowledge of where touching the system could lead them.

But what they have built has the potential for abuse that makes anything we have seen in our history pale into insignificance, should it get out of hand.

If you want proof of the start of abuse. In this case not by Google, but by those who have seen how to game Google’s control of information pay attention to this:

Consider the subject of scam products to help consumers save energy! A subject open4energy and http://www.scamraiders.com are investigating.

Google “magnetic energy generation” – an interesting concept as a renewable energy source. All looks OK – 1 million plus results, plenty ads being served for apparently “useful solutions”

NOW – Google “open4energy magnetic energy generation”

You will see the difference, for it is 95% one big scam, the content is from over 100 web sites established for the single purpose of misleading you and manipulating the Google search result algorythm, millions of dollars are being poured into nothing, and every link of the chain drinking off the foolishness of unwitting consumers.

I sincerely ask any publisher of content on electricity/energy who also serves ads from Google adSense to follow this link – http://adtumbler.com/per/reg/nesc/gps/email/educate – understand the issue we have – and use the free list of domains being offered to block this undesirable material (plus increase your own CTR) – sadly we cannot just publish the list as we know who wants it most!

Google make money on each click, the 1000′s of publishers in their network make money on every click (as do Google on these also) and consumers either waste their time if they are lucky and see into the SCAM, or pay for the plans – perpetuating this insanity.

Despite all we have done to speak to Google, or get the RIGHT information into the “system” of Google information distribution – we continue to struggle.

Google rightly have responded “it cannot “regulate the internet” – so they sit between a rock and a hard place – they own the information distribution and MAY not touch it for where will that end!

The market will self regulate, the system does work, but it is taking far too long. We are all so busy on our own issues, looking up and seeing what it means to serve a scam ad as a publisher is not on the “must do” list.

As an aside, if you are not sure about the quality of search results, add “open4energy” if it is on energy saving and get some safe content into the mix, or “earth2tech” and see what Katie has to say about the topic.

This is an example of abuse of the information control Google has, in fact that search has.

Back to our opinion on Google and electricity supply.

Think of what is to be in the next few years. The smart grid will be in place, energy use information will be wireless received by each home owner and forwarded to the Google software – Google PowerMeter. We will do this to receive the community value of comparing our use with another, trends and so on. It will be free to us, so why will we not use it, and save on our bill, and feel good about ourselves.

Google PowerMeter will be the dominant energy information system.

With the knowledge of who is using what energy across the globe, the control of what information is searched for will be small compared to the knowledge of how the most essential of all human resources, energy, is used.

We can survive without information, or we can add terms like “open4energy or earth2tech or Katie Fehrenbacher” to our requests for information, and protect ourselves – but what will we do when it comes to the supply of electricity.

I can persuade you to search differently, and in time I believe we will all search more prudently, but are you ready to get inside your electrical system and really understand the intricacies of your electrical use.

What happens if Google decides that California needs to reduce energy use in a heat wave so that Google can get a better price for the electricity they generate from a solar farm. who decides what is the best use of what energy and what we pay for it?

I am OK if we decide it is Google, but I suggest we think carefully on this first?

We allowed the banks, motivated by profits and share prices decide what money instruments were appropriate, until the United States economy was brought to an almost collapse. Pick you political side, it was a good thing the government could intervene for a time and stabilize things.

If we want Google to have the knowledge to control energy, I suggest we do let them also have the incentive to deliver it!

There will always be times we ask a fox to watch our chickens, but may I suggest we keep a watchful eye on what Mr Fox is really up to!

If you’re interested in alternative energy and green tech, check out http://www.greencollareconomy.com. It has hundreds of case studies on emerging green technology. It’s also the largest b2b green directory on the web.

Related to this post is the tweet is The Global Intelligent Retailer Justification http://bit.ly/68dvCG #EWPC