News in Short: E-book sales eclipse hardcovers, Google goes green with wind-powered data centres

Google goes green: Wind-generated energy powers data centre

The search engine giant's energy unit has entered into a deal to buy wind power from NextEra Energy for 20 years, intended to power the company's data centres.

This follows Google's $39-million investment in two wind farms, developed by the same energy resource company, which generate power for well over 50,000 homes.

Google Energy will begin buying wind power from July 30 from NextEra’s facility in Iowa at a predetermined rate, Urs Hoelzle, Google’s senior vice president of operations, said in a blog on Google’s website.

“Incorporating such a large amount of wind power into our portfolio is tricky, but this power is enough to supply several data centers,” Urs Hoelzle, Google’s senior VP of operations, said in a blog post on Google’s website. The company has began its push to address climate change, as it said it would years ago.

Amazon sees eBook sales surpass that of hardcovers

The we-sell-everything-now, internet-based book-sale giant has declared a milestone which signals a major shift in North American consumers' choices: selling more e-books than hardbacks over the past three months.

Cannibalization is rumoured and speculated, but publishers insist it's still too early to tell.

Amazon said Kindle device sales accelerated each month in the second quarter, month-on-month and year-over-year. But Amazon didn't share actual sales figures. The company has yet to ever state how many Kindle devices or ebooks it has sold.

Barnes & Noble also has seen increased ebook sales since it cut the price of its Nook e-reader. Sony, too, said that e-books sales were growing steadily.