Google dumps green promise to go after AI greenbacks

Plus, Australia starts a new fight with Big Tech, OpenAI whistleblowers claim they were silenced, Meta lets Trump back on Facebook, and more...

Welcome to a school holiday edition of the newsletter where I’ve been spending a lot of time watching Dr Seuss with my kids, which led, unexpectedly, to Google.

The search giant has quietly dropped its carbon neutral claims, dumping a 17-year environmental mission to focus on landing another bumper quarter for investors.

The switch was revealed as part of a massive investigation by Bloomberg into the environmental impact of Big Tech insatiable hunger to go all-in on AI.

It found:

“The almost overnight surge in electricity demand from data centers is now outstripping the available power supply in many parts of the world, according to interviews with data center operators, energy providers and tech executives.

“That dynamic is leading to years-long waits for businesses to access the grid as well as growing concerns of outages and price increases for those living in the densest data center markets.

The energy required by supercomputers to synthesise content stolen from the world wide web into …