Official Google Blog: Power to the people
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/power-to-people.html

Google states its mission for introducing the power meter and the reasoning behind it. By making information accessible and available to everyone, they try to save the environment. They also state actions taken to arouse attention for that subject and their activities to promote it. They make suggestions for policies and point out costumer tools they develop.

Feb 2009. - Google describes technology to monitor energy use

Google’s mission is to "organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful," and we believe consumers have a right to detailed information about their home electricity use.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to providing consumers with detailed energy information. And it will take the combined efforts of federal and state governments, utilities, device manufacturers, and software engineers to empower consumers to use electricity more wisely by giving them access to energy information.