Google and Kettle

Came across this interesting story.

Prestigious New York Times published a story which referred to a research done by a young scientist called Alex Wissner-Gross who allegedly claimed “that performing two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea”. This comes around 7 to 10 grams. This created lot of buzz in internet industry and reporters started discussing about this...

Now the turn comes in the story...

According to Wissner-Gross, he never said / claimed such statement and he never measured any stats on this. He also said that this figure is coming from some third party research and he is not sure about source of this information. We don't know who created this buff; however Wissner-Gross became popular in a days time and reporters were busy interviewing him the whole day!! He also did not miss the opportunity to market his firm called CO2Stats.

See the full article here

The dimention from which I would see this thing is PR!
Isn't this PR?
I have no doubt that both NYT and CO2stats will leverage on this opportunity. I am not sure whether this misrepresentation of data is by mistake or its is being done consciously. However, it is for sure that any news item revolving around Google will be discussed and will get you some mileage.
Guys, use Google to make your marketing! Good example of PR on web.

Media Roundup - Top news from Media last week

New York Times to sell stake in Red Sox — The Times is planning to sell its 17.5 percent stake in the Boston Red Sox in an effort to raise $150 million to $200 million in cash. The company may also sell The Boston Globe and About.com to gain additional breathing room. [Source: Silicon Alley Insider]

Post and Sun to share content — Longtime rivals, The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun, have inked an agreement to exchange some news and sports stories. The deal doesn’t include some news topics, such as University of Maryland athletic coverage. [Source: Editor and Publisher]

USA Today to be sold on Kindle — USA Today will join The Washington Post, The New Tork Times and other large newspapers on Amazon’s Kindle e-reader device. While the final monthly subscription price has not been released, similar papers sell for $10-$15 a month. [Source: paidContent]

Pew Survey: TV still #1 source for news, Web catching up — As a news source, the Web has surpassed newspapers for the first time in the survey’s history to become America’s second most popular source of news behind television. The survey asked 1,489 adults about their news habits and also ranked the top news stories of 2008. [Source: Pew Research]

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