That's surprising that they can pay people salary and justify the expenses through energy costs just by those changes.
Their vision is great. In my opinion. Outstanding management ideeas, to optimize everything, and not just the search engine platform.
It does point to an intersting upcoming conundrum that computers are going to face. While processing keeps going up, so are the energy costs, and at some point it is just not going to make sense. So it seems like Google is definately on the cutting edge of this. It is going to trickle down to everyone, eventually, though.
CPU manufacturers (Intel, IBM, Motorola, AMD, etc.) have already been pushing for lower power consumption CPUs (which is the biggest energy user within a computer). And not just for notebook CPUs (server CPUs also): http://www.serverpipeline.com/169500407 They are also planning on moving away from raw Mhz/Ghz as a measure of CPU power, and instead switch to a Mhz per watt measure.
Oh thanks for the link. I do like the idea of a efficiency measurement over a pure power one. I wonder if that Intel Chip is named [and mis-spelled] after Shannyn Sossamon because if it is I want two.
Ditto Shawn's comment - power (and heat) density is a major issue at big data centers ... and also for holiday lights ... ;-)