Indian power company Reliance Energy has tied up with Google to offer consumers the ability to track their power consumption on their computers. According to Google.org, the Google PowerMeter receives information from utility smart meters and energy management devices. What's interesting here is that the electricity consumption is tracked on the users personal iGoogle homepage, and uses Google Aps. We believe this helps the company promote the usage of Google Aps and iGoogle. (Hat Tip: Sumant Srivathsan) The service will be available to Reliance Energy consumers in Mumbai, Delhi and Orissa, covering around 6.8 million customers; it's highly unlikely, though, that all 6.8 million customers will have Internet connectivity or the propensity to sign up for this. Remember that India has only 6.22 million broadband connections. Privacy Policy When it comes to Google, we're always curious about their privacy policy: the amount of user specific data that Google is able to track, index, link together and utilize for serving contextual or (potentially) behavioral advertising is enormous, and there are concerns about Google having too much information about their users. According to their privacy policy: Google PowerMeter is an opt-in service and users must sign up to participate. No personally identifying information will be shared between Google and the user's utility. All energy data received by Google PowerMeter will be stored securely, and users will be able to delete their energy data or ask their utility to stop sending data to Google PowerMeter at any time. Google.org's India Initiatives: Primarily Focused On…
