Google is boiling of kettle analogy
Google has denied that a search using its popular search engine produces 7g of Carbon dioxide, a figure which comes from a claim made by US physicist Alex Wissner-Gross. Urs Holzle, senior vice president of operations at Google stated that Wissner-Gross’ calculations were incorrect and the 7g figure is many times too high.
Holze argued that Google’s speed keeps energy consumption down because the severs are only accessed for a thousandth of a second. Holze stated that a Google search in fact uses the same amount of energy that the human body consumes in ten seconds and the carbon emissions are in the region of .02g per search.
John Buckley, MD of environmental consultancy carbonfootprint.com estimates the carbon emissions for a Google search are between 1g and 10g. Chris Goodall, author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet claims the emissions of a bGoogle search are between 7g and 10g.
Michael Reed
