Who would have thought your carbon footprint extends all the way to your search queries on Google! In a new study by Jonathan Kommey of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, servers for Google and other behemoth web companies are sucking up an immense amount of energy. According to Koomey, these firms' data centers consume one percent of the world's electricity and with the way they're growing, they may eat up five times as much a decade from now...
Google Searches Bad for the Environment
Google has about 24 server farms around the world. The photo above is of their first server, before it grew into an actual farm.
Time to start offering these companies tax breaks for installing their own solar power grid! via New Scientist
photo: Five Favorite Obscure Google Search Tricks
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I think their power use might actually start to decline over the next few years, or at least stop increasing. Processors are rapidly becoming more energy-efficient, solid-state drives are increasing in capacity and hard drives are storing more and more data in the same space (and for the same power). These server farms are also starting to move to cooler, northern climes, where they can be cooled with ambient air or by tapping into local cold-water sources without using more energy-intensive compressor-based air conditioning systems.
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processors are becoming more energy efficient, but most companies will not upgrade to them until it is necessary, required, or something breaks.
otherwise it would cost them an immense amount of money.
view jmorey's profile