And Gizmodo had an interesting take on it today. Here is an excerpt:

“Google is a company. A gigantic company. And yes, its motto is “Don’t Be Evil,” but there’s no way it would do anything feel-good that wasn’t going to save them or make them loads of money in the long run, and this is no different. When it comes to Google’s priorities, it’s makin’ dollas first, everything else second.

So yes, while saving the environment is a popular bandwagon to jump on for companies looking for an image boost right now, Google stands to actually benefit from moving to renewable energy.

Google doesn’t like talking about its server farms, but educated guesses put its number of servers at around 500,000. That is a serious number of (custom, energy-efficient) servers, and that has got to use a serious amount of power. Using wild conjecture and assumptions, I’m going to guess that Google uses as much power as a small city to run its servers every day, which is a lot for one company to pay.

So when HP yesterday announced that it planned to save $800,000 next year by installing a one-megawatt solar electric power system at a plant in San Diego, and buying 80 gigawatt-hours of wind energy in Ireland, you’ve got to wonder why analysts still see Google as some naïve, idealistic child.

Think about it: if Google bank rolls research that develops a more efficient form of renewable energy, say, solar panels that are twice as efficient as current models, it benefits in three distinct ways. First, it saves money by powering its gigantic server farms cheaply using renewable energy. Second, it makes money by having the rights to the new technology that other energy-hungry companies will want. And third, it’ll look like the hero of the beach for spending loads of money to help save the environment and actually making a difference.”