Being involved with web marketing, I've had somewhat of a love/hate relationship with Google for quite some years now. Google's been very kind to me in delivering free traffic to my web sites, but at times their various algorythmic tweaks have been a white knuckle ride.

I also wasn't really happy when they went the IPO path as satisfying greedy shareholders can be a great way to ruin a company's original ethics and mission. But as it's turned out, Google is still the best search engine around and will likely be for the forseeable future.

A tech company as big as Google also has a huge environmental footprint and it's been very encouraging  to see their efforts to become carbon neutral. In fact, it goes a little past that, they have committed to be carbon neutral by the end of 2007. Their strategy is quite comprehensive; some of the highlights include

- more efficient power supplies in their servers
- they operate largest corporate shuttle program in the U.S
- a $5,000 employee rebate on the purchase of fuel efficient cars
- free bicycles for staff
- organic and locally produced food in cafeterias
- 1.6 MW solar PV installation at their Mountain View headquarters
- member of the Green Power Market Development
- goal of 50 megawatts of new renewable generating capacity for data centers by 2012
- what energy they can't produce themselves, they'll offset

Google's rise to search engine dominance in such a short space of time was phenomenal. The company is continuing to lead the way among large "mainstream" public companies in their efforts to go green. Where Google goes, many will follow. It seems that once again, other mega corps such as Microsoft will be playing environmentally-friendly catchup with the mighty Google.

.. and has the Mighty G's announcement about its sweeping treehugger strategy sent their share prices crashing? Nope, there was some interesting movement up and down a little today after their announcement; but they finished the day at an amazing $514.31 a share. Shareholders must be learning there's green in going green and that there's nothing to fear in trying to look after the planet; it's simply good business.

Learn more about Google's "A Clean Energy Future" initiatives

What's your carbon footprint? Try this free emissions calculator.