At Green:Net 2011 Om Malik hosted a discussion with Yahoo's Chris Page and Google's Bill Weihl on "Greener Data Center"

It was great to see that Om Malik chose the Green Data Center topic for GreenNet. His choice for interviewing were Google and Yahoo. Not Facebook. Not Amazon. Not Microsoft, who chose to speak about on how software, the web and cell phone are creating more efficient systems, but Microsoft was not on Om's panel.

Here are a few questions that I found were interesting to share with you.

Om Malik asks with Google's 100MW wind power purchase is this an indicator of Google's future site selection, making renewable energy as part of data center site? Bill Weidl did a good job of avoiding the questioning by making the point that he hopes more users take into account energy composition in site selection. The 100 MW wind power contract Google announced is 180 miles from Google's data center so the power doesn't go directly to a Google data center, but the wind power is on the same power grid as its data center.

Om says he has seen the media discuss the merits of building a big or small data center. Is it better to build big or small? Chris Page answers that Yahoo's approach is to build modular. Bill answers Google builds what is most efficient.

One question I think Om asked for the audience is to have Chris and Bill decode PUE. I hope you know the answer to this one.

Here is a live coverage page that you can go to see more. http://gigaom.com/cleantech/greennet-2011-live-coverage/