Venture capitalist Bill Joy: choose green tech over internet investments

Bill Joy was a co-founder and scientist at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) until he left for private capital in 2005, joining Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. Although out of the tech spotlight these days, many still follow what he has to say based on his credited involvement with inventing several widely-used internet technologies. As a venture capitalist, many want to know what Joy sees as viable investments from 2007 moving forward.

He gave a glimpse of what he's not looking at this week when he delivered an outlook at the Lux Research conference on nanotechnology. According to Joy, green technology is hot, internet is not. Wha? Internet investing is out of style with one of its founders? How can that be? Let me put it mildly: the valuations of some companies operating almost solely in the 'net these days makes for a "wacky" investment strategy, according to Joy.

Although Joy speaks the virtues of several semiconductor firms, he stated that internet investments are "wacky right now" and that the better opportunity in the near term will be in green technology investments. You know, ones that allow electric autos to become affordable and available, as well as alternative energy sources like photovoltaic products that convert sunlight directly into energy.

He shuns biodiesel and ethanol in favor of all-electric personal transportation and notes that investment in these areas is exploding. His firm has already invested in solar thermal and photovoltaic technology, but the sheer fact that Joy slaps all internet investments is a surprise. Perhaps he's one of the many who think Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG)'s current $620+ share price is a bit overblown. Does Google even have a moat? Perhaps, perhaps not. Bill Joy doesn't care, and he's not investing there. Are you?