Richard Branson & Google Shoot for Mars (GOOG)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 1, 7:10AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has recently been under fire from critics over its side-operations in going green and its own space-race. It isn’t the coolness factor that is the issue, but the falling share prices mixed with the slowing economy and lower click-thru’s on banner ads and AdSense are causing critics to think "Tell them to worry about that other stuff in 2010."

This morning the company has discussed on its official Google blog the launch Project Virgile. This is Richard Branson’s Virgin and Google teaming up for the establishment of a permanent human settlement on Mars. Branson noted in the post, "In the years to come, we’ll be sending up a series of spaceships carrying (along with the supplies and tools needed to build the new colony) what eventually will be hundreds of Mars colonists, or Virgle Pioneers — myself among them."

Branson also says, "Larry Page, Sergey Brin and I feel strongly that contemporary technology is sufficiently advanced to make such an effort both successful and economical, and that it’s high time that humanity moved beyond Earth and began our great, long journey to explore the stars and establish our first lasting foothold on another world."

None of this lacks any cool factor. But this effort is going to be yet another side show as the economy slide and as the stock is under pressure. This won’t cool any heated words over the distraction over day to day operations.

Jon C. Ogg
April 1, 2008 (is there an April Fool’s joke in play here?)

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.