January 13, 2009
Google Searches: Maybe a Boiling Teaspoon, Not a Kettle
Yesterday, we passed along an arresting story from The Sunday Times, which said that two Google searches and boiling one kettle of water both generated about the same amount of greenhouse gases.
In response to the story, Google deployed its public-relations machine almost faster than the search engine could yield results to the 13th most popular search of the day, “teacher slept with boy 300 times” (84,900 results in .53 seconds).
“As computers become a bigger part of more people’s lives, information technology consumes an increasing amount of energy, and Google takes this impact seriously,” said a statement on the official Google blog, posted the morning the Times story came out. “That’s why we have designed and built the most energy efficient data centers in the world, which means the energy used per Google search is minimal.”
Two Google searches equaling a pot of boiling water is wildly overstated, Google said. A search burns about 0.0003 kilowatt hours of energy. “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.”
The Harvard researcher in the middle of the story, Alex Wissner-Gross, also criticized the Times story in a follow-up interview in TechNewsWorld. He said he never mentions Google in his research.
“Our work has nothing to do with Google,” he said. “Our focus was exclusively on the Web overall, and we found that it takes on average about 20 milligrams of CO2 per second to visit a Web site.” His research, he said, also never mentions tea kettles.
However, he did point out that “everything online has a definite environmental impact,” he said. “I think everybody can agree on that, including Google.” —Scott Carlson
Posted on Tuesday January 13, 2009 | Permalink |Comments
Commenting is closed for this article.
Previous: Guide Tries to Help Students Decide What to Cite
Next: Northwest Missouri State U. Tries E-Book Readers, With Mixed Results
“A watched pot never boils”
— b Jan 13, 02:18 PM #
A tempest in a teapot?
— UC Prof Jan 13, 02:21 PM #
109,000 results in 0.31 seconds, by the way.
— b Jan 13, 02:23 PM #
A typo in the article. It should be 0.0003 kilowatt hours, not kilowatts.
Kilowatts is a unit of power, not energy.
— M Srinivasan Jan 13, 05:16 PM #
Many thanks to #4 for pointing out the typo, which has been fixed. And as for #3, in the four hours between my posting this and your Google search, there are more sites out there with an interest in sexed up teachers and students. Think of how much tea that is!
— Scott Carlson Jan 13, 09:08 PM #
UK newspapers—that’s what this is. They can’t be trusted with reality.
— CTMathewes Jan 14, 08:44 AM #
Signifies nothing…it’s still better than walking and driving to libraries and getting less information as a result.
— ap Jan 14, 10:47 AM #
Most library information is available to your desktop through their online databases. I think this all demonstrates that information online is easily exploited and sensationalized. Patient, critical reading skills are timeless, and online culture leads to short attention spans.
— Erika Jan 14, 02:01 PM #
Google’s response points out that a car driving 1km produces as many greenhouse gases as a 1,000 Google searches, as though that’s supposed to highlight how little energy searching Google uses. My reaction was the exact opposite – 1,000 searches is nothing and driving a car one mile seems like it should cause a lot more damage than many times that number of searches. I think Google would have been better served to focus on its large scale support of alternative energy solutions : http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/technology/internet/28google.html
— bg Jan 14, 02:44 PM #