Google searches and the Carbon cost
Monday, January 19, 2009
I never paid much attention to the fact that how many times I hit http://www.google.com for performing searches. Let it be anything, the very first thing that comes to mind is "do a google search and find it out". It does matter though. How much? Well, I happened to read an article on BBC the other day where some studies suggest that a search produces anywhere between 0.2 and 7 g CO2 (thats actually more than enough to boil an electric kettle).
The price has to be paid right ? I mean the faster the search is, the more data banks it uses to transmit data contributing towards the energy usage. Google has come out and said that they've improved their search engines to be more energy efficient and that it doesn't consume large amounts but some research has to be done in order to minimize the consumption. I'm sure there are studies underway as we speak and folks are trying to cut the cost of energy being spent by a computer.
How soon can we see changes? Not sure its gonna be that fast. There are websites that help minimize these costs and the emissions by suggesting you as to what should be done; co2stats.com is one of them (am sure there are many). So the next time you do a search on google - think twice ... maybe you could avoid it and save some energy :D
Labels: Carbon, Emission, Energy, Google
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