About Gary Cook

Gary Cook Gary Cook is a senior policy analyst at Greenpeace US.

Google pressures largest US utility company to put renewable energy on the menu

Thanks to some pressure from Google, the largest utility company in the U.S., Duke Energy, now plans to offer renewable energy to its major customers.  This will allow Google, who also announced plans today to double the size of one if its largest data centers, an option to power its cloud with clean energy. Continue reading

In search of a greener cloud: Google vs Microsoft

Microsoft wants the world to think it has its groove back – that it’s moved beyond the ignominy of the Mac vs. PC Apple ads, Windows 95 and Clippy, the helpful mascot everyone loved so much. Microsoft is looking to the cloud to change its old-fashioned perception, starting with its cloud-centric Windows 8 due out later this month. Microsoft has also made a lot of claims about how clean and green the cloud is, but is the Microsoft cloud still attached to a past energy era? We’ll try to answer that question in this article, and others to come, by comparing Microsoft to Google, one of its main competitors. Continue reading