Millions of users enjoy using Google’s lightning fast search engine to find answers to search queries every day. Could the extra servers that make Google so fast burning through energy and harming our environment?

One Harvard physicist named Alex Wissner-Gross has set out to answer this question and came up with some surprising results. His studies found that one search on Google.com could use half as much energy as boiling a pot of tea.

Wissner-Gross says that a Google search creates 7 grams of CO2. Boiling a kettle creates about 15 grams of CO2 that will be released into our atmosphere.

Google is very secretive about the number and location of its data centers, though the company is known for distributing them across the globe. This makes it so that there’s almost always a server closer to users than the company’s Mountain View headquarters for faster results.

While this may not seem like a lot of energy for one search, it can really add up. Estimates place the number of Google search queries per day at over 200 million.

If you’re thinking about jumping ship to a greener search engine, think again. Google contends that it is one of the most energy efficient of all Internet search providers.

Google has already countered this claim on its corporate blog, arguing that the number is, “*many* times too high.” Senior Vice President of Operations, Urs Holzle, says that the average search takes just .2 seconds to process.

However the Harvard research doesn’t simply include the computing cost of a single search query. Wissner-Gross’s calculations take into account the extra storage capacity that allows Google to react to searches so quickly.

As with all arguments, the truth in this case probably lies somewhere in between the two sides. However it does bring to light the repercussions that some of our smallest actions online can have on the planet.

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Entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 10:15 am under Google, Green Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Jeyes.
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