Two searches on Google uses the same amount of power as boiling water in a tea kettle
 

Google Searches Are Power Hogs
http://earth2tech.com/2009/01/12/goo...re-power-hogs/

Because Google has developed its search engine to provide you with results as fast as possible, its search queries are actually consuming a significant amount of power, resulting in substantial CO2 emissions per search query, Harvard PhD student Alex Wissner-Gross, creator of CO2Stats tells the London Times. How much is a lot? An average search on the Google emits 7 grams of CO2 ? so, two searches on Google uses the same amount of power as boiling water in a tea kettle. (Update: Google disagrees with that data, and says an average search query emits closer to 0.2 grams of CO2, and that 7 grams is ?many times too high.?)

Wissner-Gross, who will be speaking at our Green:Net conference in March in San Francisco, calculated the data for his Harvard research on the environmental impact of computing. He says the power consumption of a Google search-query is so high because the company?s process sends data to numerous competing servers, sometimes thousands of miles away, in order to bring back the result as fast as possible. The article didn?t compare the carbon footprint of a Google search to that of other search engines, but Wissner-Gross? research also found that looking at a simple web page emits 0.02g of CO2 per second, and a more complex web site with video and images emits closer to 0.2g of CO2 a second. (That means our online video sister site NewTeeVee is in trouble!)

My guess is that Google is very aware that its architecture is more power-intensive than it could be, but it has determined that the speed of the query is critical to its business success ? and therefore more important than bringing down that power consumption.

Remember, power use is a cost for Google and other computing companies, so bringing down power consumption of anything in its infrastructure is just good for its business, beyond the environmental impact. And Google has long been very aggressive about reducing power in its data centers, as well as investing in other ways to make itself and the computing world more eco-friendly. So, if there was an easy way for Google to reduce that per-query energy consumption, it probably would have done it already. It?s not like the company doesn?t pay attention to this sort of thing.

But perhaps bringing attention to the situation will push Google to look at more innovative ways to reduce that per-query energy consumption. Is there a way to provide results at a slightly slower speed at certain times of day when search volume is lowest? Or, here?s a somewhat hokier option: offer a feel-good Google page (greenergoogle.com?) that offers slower service by pinging fewer servers. But I can guarantee you, if less power consumption per search query means a lot worse service, users will opt for the power-hungry version.

What the fuck does google care? They have BILLIONS of dollars. Think they care about boiling water or how much energy it takes?

Here is another way to look at it. If Google didn't use all of that power there would 4,250 less people without jobs fueling the fire at the power company.

The way I see it, Google is CREATING jobs by using lots of energy and what not :1orglaugh

Go Google... fuck green living :2 cents:

As compared to driving 40 miles to a libary to get a book on the subject.

eco-idiots like him come up with this bullshit (because that is what it is) to get their name in the press.

web video = .02 grams of CO2 per second
porn videos are destroying the earth! ;)

1000 searches = 1 kilometer traveled in a car

It was just on CNBC

Oh here we go ... Global warming lunatics calculating how much carbon is produced by Google searches.

Well as long as they're keeping it real, I suppose.

I saw a stat once that it takes about 10,000 barrels of oil to make one computer processor, or some ridiculous number. I can't remember the exact figures, but I was like "what? That's some eco bullshit that I'm not buying."

There was whole list of things like that, such as the cost in barrels of oil to put one fucking bean on your plate, or make one bolt for your car.

C02 is a required ingredient for plants to produce 02 :2 cents:

Without C02, trees can't survive and without trees we don't get 02


C02 isn't the cause of global warming, the sun is.

Technically, we're in a state of Global cooling, not warming.

that bullshit about global warming and last week it was -10 C during the day one of the coldest winterdays of the last couple of years

Oh my God! We're all going to die!

Whatever happened to "don't be evil"?

I paid my electric bill using the internet intead of driving there and wasting paper to
write a check.

Computer = Green.

FALSE FALSE FALSE.

This is bound to become one of those urban myths.

Here is the reply straight from Google's mouth.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/...le-search.html

Thtas fucked up!

Any impact if the search terms are shorter?

I could power my hot tub just on my google searching alone! ;)

i still cant decide what to put my GOOGLE ADSENSE stickers on. lol

waste of planet :helpme

knowing this, I will do extra searches on Google today

from google themself: "a Google search uses just about the same amount of energy that your body burns in ten seconds." and "the average car driven for one kilometer (0.6 miles for those in the U.S.) produces as many greenhouse gases as a thousand google searches."

...still makes you think...wow that's a lot of energy/emissions per google search...i'm not even one of those "green" people but makes you want to be a little smarter with your searches

For every five searches made on google...

I ejaculate once!

:1orglaugh