As part of an effort to help companies manage and slash carbon budgets, Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google will notify its cloud customers of the carbon emissions of their cloud usage and release satellite imagery to them for the first time for environmental analysis.
Google Cloud announced the new features on Tuesday to kick off its annual client conference, which is being hosted digitally this year owing to the epidemic. Google, Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), the three largest Western cloud vendors, have been competing on sustainability services for years. They hope to help businesses that are being pressured by stakeholders to reconsider their operations in light of climate change.
The emissions connected with the electricity required to store and process a customer’s data are displayed in Google’s new carbon footprint reporting tool, which is identical to one provided by Microsoft. Google will now notify customers when they are squandering energy on inactive cloud services. Since 2009, tens of thousands of researchers, governments, and advocacy groups have used Google Earth Engine, the company’s new mapping service. However, Google is now allowing businesses to use the service, which contains numerous large geographical datasets like Landsat as well as the software required to analyze them. A similar project has been launched by Amazon.
“This is something we have now realized is applicable to a lot of these commercial opportunities,” said Jen Bennett, a technical director at Google Cloud.
According to Google, Earth Engine might assist in guarantee supply networks are sustainable and foresee operational issues due to extreme weather. Unilever Plc (ULVR.L), which has been testing the technology for the past 12 months, has examined its palm oil supplies in Indonesia, however, it is unclear whether this has resulted in any changes in operations.
