To Google, with Love

I am in love with Google.

It's any HCI student's dream to be able to work at Google, a company who has from the beginning valued the user experience as a top consideration when designing their products. Google's mission to organize the world's information is ever-more successful. Recent user-pleasing improvements include a new look for Google Docs and Spreadsheets and the ability to drag your route around on Google Maps. It's now easy to visually choose your alternate route and to compare times on different routes.

In addition to the generally useful awesomeness of Google, Google is environmentally conscious. So much so, in fact, that they plan to be carbon neutral by the end of 2007. This is an amazing step for a company of their size. I wish I had a quote on how many servers they have, but it's a LOT! And to make all the energy to power those carbon neutral is quite a feat.

Incidentally, a little later I stumbled across a link to Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics, which I thought was interesting. It's unfortunate that Apple is lagging behind in some areas, since I like them so much (what a change from a few years ago!), but when I look at their page on the environment, it seems that they are making a decent effort with the recycling and such, even giving 10% off of a new iPod if you recycle your old one.

I also feel that their products tend to last longer, which in itself is good for the environment since they don't enter the waste stream (or recycling) as readily.

In any case, I wish you happy and green computing until next time.