“I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need to be employed in dissuading them from it.”
– Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1)
We all know that Google is incredibly future-oriented, and that, for all its problems, Microsoft, knows a lot about technology and markets. Why, then, did each shockthe ‘smart grid’ movement by announcing the phaseout of their home energy metering and control technologies (Microsoft’s Hohm and Google’s EnergyMeter)?
The deep meaning of this is less about technology than it is about politics.
Two PR Moments
You will learn nothing from the announcements from Google and Microsoft. Both companies’ PR departments broke the news as sanctimoniously as possible, using the language of planetary consciousness.…