14 DAY TRIAL // Google is rather accustomed to success by now and, while not all of it's venture pan out as it intends, the company keeps going from strength to strength. And it’s not just commercial products that benefit from Google’s attention, it also handles a rather interesting philanthropic arm, Google.org, which operates as a non-profit with a keen focus on green technology.
One of the more well-known and practical projects coming out of Google.org has been the PowerMeter, a tool that enables users to keep an eye on their power usage in the hopes of bringing unnecessary consumption down. The project has been doing quite well, with Google signing a few deals with device manufacturers and utility companies. But it will have to continue to do so without the help of its public face, former astronaut Ed Lu.
Lu has been serving as Google’s head of Advanced Projects, a rather vague title. His job revolved a lot around talking about plans for the PowerMeter project and acting as Google’s green tech evangelist. Probably not as exciting as his previous job as a NASA astronaut.
His credentials in the latter field are much more impressive. He served as flight engineer on two Shuttle launches and had a six months stay aboard the International Space Station. He was also the first American astronaut to serve as a flight engineer on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
He retired from NASA in 2007 to go on to work for Google. He is now leaving that behind as well to write a book about his experiences as an astronaut. He is now working at Sunfire Offices, a collective work space made up of a rather exclusive list of tech execs and engineers. It’s located in Mountain View, California, where Google is also headquartered, no coincidence since there are plenty of ex-Googlers involved like Kevin Fox, former UI designer for Gmail, Friendfeed, Facebook; Jawed Karim, co-founder of YouTube; Vibhu Mittal, former senior research scientist at Google and so on.