Google to develop geothermal energy in China ?  

Danwei has an article speculating that Google might be getting out of the internet business in China but they could be concentrating on clean energy - particularly geothermal energy - there instead - Google to develop geothermal energy in China.

From the time of Google's January announcement about their "new approach" to China until Tuesday's service disruption apparently caused by the Great FireWall, the press has been left guessing about both Google and the Chinese government's intentions and the state of their presumed negotiations.

But thanks to a source at Ha'erbin Institute of Technology, Danwei can reveal what Google now plans to do with their Beijing and Shanghai offices, and the engineering talent that they have spent the last four years recruiting and developing: the the tech giant plans to stop or radically cut funding for all Internet, advertising and mobile businesses in China, and turn their R&D teams exclusively over to Google's clean energy development projects.

Our source at Ha'erbin Institute of Technology insisted on anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the news, but revealed that Google's new direction was satisfactory to both the Chinese government and Google itself.

"This allows Google to feel they are contributing to bettering the lives of the Chinese people, while removing itself from the information business, an industry that the Chinese government will not give up controlling," the source said.

A former researcher at Ha'erbin Institute of Technology, Professor Wang Badan, now of the Peking Information and Electronics Center of Engineering, told Danwei that his former employer in the northeastern city of Ha'erbin had been working on geo-thermal power technology for many years. Geo-thermal power refers to the use of energy from the earth's molten core to produce electricity. Google has already invested substantial sums of money in research on such technology in the United States.