Microsoft kills Hohm, green credentials
Microsoft has killed Hohm, its home energy monitoring service. And with it, its green credentials. Hopefully.
Don’t you just love the way big business has tried to get involved with the campaign for a greener way of living? No, me neither. It stinks of jumping on the bandwagon, of trying to ingratiate with customers and lawmakers while at the same time continuing to do things that really aren’t helping protect or save the planet. Enough already. It’s hypocrisy, plain and simple.
Manufacturing of all kinds is a fairly damaging activity, especially in these days of a throwaway society where even big, expensive gadgets and toys are junked rather than repaired. Which means any global business or brand with even one finger in the manufacturing pie isn’t particularly green. And Microsoft is just one of the companies which fits that bill.
Microsoft tried to up its green credentials by rolling out Hohm, a service which helped customers monitor and then reduce their power consumption. But no one really bothered using it and Hohm never quite made it out of beta. And now, with the announcement that Hohm is being killed off on May 31, 2012, it never will.
This follows hot on the heels of Google killing PowerMeter, a similar service which the search giant decided to shutter citing low adoption rates. In other words, no one was bothering with either service, probably because most people know roughly how much energy they’re using in their homes and know that they use what they need to. In the main.
The timing of Microsoft killing Hohm suggests the company was just waiting for Google to make the first move. As GreenBeat suggests, it became something of “a game of green chicken,” with both seeing which one would blink first. Microsoft can claim some kind of victory for holding out longer, but only by a week.
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