I ran across an interesting article in Technology Times Online: Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches. This article essentially says that the amount of infrastructure used by Google (or, for that matter, any service with massive server farms) has a huge environmental impact...going so far as to equate the carbon emissions of two Google searches to those from boiling a cup of tea. Google immediately hit back via their blog: Powering a Google Search.
Regardless of the actual numbers and the companies involved...it certainly is worthwhile thinking about how we can be most efficient in selecting our computers, servers, and service providers!
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Is Blogging Killing the Environment?
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3 comments:
When considering the cost of Google, we should consider also how many resources we save compared to traditional distribution of that much information. What would be the cost, environmental and financial, of ensuring that every local library the world over had that much information available to it in print? The cost of people in some areas driving to such libraries?
..and in multiple copies in print ;)
Great point!
Check out treehugger's take - some good math checks there: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/01/seven-grams-per-google-search.php#ch03
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