Illustration by Christine Hipp

Silicon Valley got its name from its number of silicon chip manufacturers in the 1970s. However, if new Google investments prove fruitful, they may rename it Green Valley.

Google’s recent $200 million investment in a Texas wind farm is a strong bet that more big businesses should make. Making sustainability a corporate priority is the type of risk that should be encouraged.

In last year’s election, business was often seen by the public as an enemy of progressive causes because of its staunch support for Citizen’s United and a Republican party fraught with Reagan-era economic beliefs. However, Google’s dominance of tech markets in recent years has shown good business practice is not incompatible with striving for sustainability.

The scale of Google’s investment is an impressive hallmark of Google’s forward thinking business model. The Spinning Spur Wind Project is able to power 60,000 homes for a single year, and will be looking to add capacity with Google’s investment. For reference, that’s the same capacity of the Hoover Dam’s output in a single year.

Wind power has much potential to be the renewable energy source for our future. UC Santa Cruz has led the way in creating sustainable wind power, most recently installing a microgrid wind farm on the Santa Cruz Wharf in June.

But that’s nothing compared to the budget Google can provide.

Wind power has received a bad reputation because of ecological concerns surrounding birds and alleged health problems. However, while the bird problem continues to confound scientists, despite some advances according to a 2012 Scientific American article, wind farms have been proved to have no major health concerns with regards to humans, according to two separate public health studies in the last year.

Consider it a win for the forward thinking corporate investors at Google, and the entrepreneurs who strive to be like them.

While Google will receive a tax incentive for investing in wind power, one should not focus on what they receive for the investment, but the gesture the investment sends.

In order to capitalize on Google’s investment spree, entrepreneurs and scientists must strive to make the wind turbine an urban innovation too. The Spinning Spur Wind Project sits outside Amarillo, Texas by some 40 miles — that type of power source could have major advantages if we could build it closer to a city or in one.

Since 2010, Google has placed $1 billion into differing renewable energy projects, Spinning Spur included. Google’s purchase announces that wind power can be a profit-making enterprise worthy of strong consideration for the next generation of Silicon Valley companies.

California entrepreneurs should rejoice about Google’s investment. Entrepreneurs and college students who possess that big idea to bring the wind farm to the urban farm may expect to find a strong backer in the tech giant.

A culture of strong ideas and easy funding surrounding wind power should make the renewable energy source proliferate at a much faster pace. At the very least, Google’s investment indicates the strong financial health of a burgeoning industry.

Or it could mean, that you’re next in line.

Less than 10 years ago, campus email was handled in-house with the school’s own servers and IT infrastructure, which was called CruzMail. But as the campus population expanded, the home-grown system groaned underneath the added e-traffic.

Lisa Bono, communications manager at Information Technology Services, said that the pathway to using Google as a vendor has been long and complex one.

“A few years ago, we needed $1 million for the handling of CruzMail. We did do a lot of upgrades to keep up [with the increasing traffic], but really, it was very clogged,” Bono said. “Then a few years ago, Davis moved its students to Gmail. That move of some 18,000 accounts really relieved their servers … CruzMail was just getting old. We couldn’t keep up with the new technology.”

To relieve their traffic, the school created a Gmail account and called it SlugMail, which all student accounts were migrated onto. Faculty and staff remained on the CruzMail server.

“Last year, we surveyed the faculty and staff and they voted to switch to Gmail,” Bono said. “There was no way [CruzMail] could compete with all the capabilities Gmail has.”

Faculty and staff migrated onto a new UCSC Gmail domain last November.

“Those were two separate domains [for students and faculty/staff] … it caused a lot of buildup,” Bono said. “Having one domain is more reliable … just better infrastructure all around, and Google prefers [it].”

Rather than switching the smaller population of faculty and staff to the SlugMail domain, ITS decided to switch students onto the UCSC Gmail domain.

“Faculty did not want to jump onto the student email system,” Bono said. “We talked about that … we emailed the professors and asked them what they thought we should do. Overall, leadership wanted to move the students rather than the faculty and staff. It would have confused a lot of staff.”

Because SlugMail is a Gmail account, switching students to the UCSC Google domain is expected to be much simpler than the earlier switch from CruzMail (in-house) to SlugMail (Google).

Google offers their Gmail service to the school, with support, free of charge and advertisements. Bono spoke about the alternative rewards Google stands to gain from UCSC’s use of Gmail.

“What they get out of it is they get you for life,” Bono said. “I think they really want us to be loyal Gmail users. And the more people, the better for them.”

As per negotiations between UC Office of the President and Google, a contract signed in June of last year commits the entire UC system to an eventual transition to Gmail.

Google has the final rights to this service, but they do not own the data, and usernames and passwords of UCSC accounts are encrypted.

“Overall, its a win-win … Gmail is more efficient, more modern, more cost-effective,” Bono said. “We’re giving up some control. Everything has to follow their policy. But how likely is an email outage beyond one or two hours? That would be a global problem.”

With the free service, the multi-million dollar funding model once devoted to email infrastructure across the university is no longer needed.

“It does help us out financially,” Bono said. “Those funds can be allocated elsewhere and more efficiently.”

All positions at ITS are being re-evaluated. Certain staff members may not be replaced when they leave.

“We still have an email infrastructure crew, but they’re more in the networking field … and we still manage email traffic through the servers, but we don’t house the software,” Bono said.

UCSC is the first UC to switch its faculty and staff to Gmail, and will be the second to switch its students, after Davis.

Come Feb. 22, students will need to log into the Gmail domain. As this is a new account, previous mail stored in SlugMail will not be there.

“We have a tool to migrate it which we will link [students] to,” Bono said. “It’s a super easy tool that works very quickly. Mobile devices will also need to be updated.”