Arjun Raj

A common question that is playing on the minds of some environmentalists is whether Google is doing more harm than good to the planet. US (Harvard University) physicist, Alex Wissner-Gross’s research claims that a single Google search from a desktop produces 7g of CO2, as reported in The Times, London, and "Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea…"

Google replied saying, “In fact, in the time it takes to do a Google search, your own personal computer will use more energy than Google uses to answer your query.” The IT giant says that the average car, when driven for a kilometer (0.6 miles), generates as many greenhouse gasses as 1000 Google searches. Kevin Marks, a worker at Google in their Open Social project says on his blog that the average human being produces about 0.6g of CO2 by just breathing for ten minutes. “A single book runs around 2,500 grams of CO2, or more than 350 times a Google search,” says Jason Kincaid of TechCrunch. He continues, “A single cheeseburger has a carbon footprint of around 3,600 grams - over 500 times larger than a Google search. Granted, meat in general has a notoriously large carbon footprint, but if you're genuinely concerned about your environmental impact, then try cutting a burger from your diet every week and search guilt-free. (You may even lose a few pounds!)”

In his book “Ten Technologies to Save the Planet”, author Chris Goodall says that each Google search produces about 7g – 10g of carbon during an assumed period of 15 minutes per search. (In another estimate, from carbonfootprint.com the CO2 emissions of a Google search are put at between 1g and 10g) The question that comes to mind however, is whether these carbon emissions are from Google searches, or from the general use of the computer itself. True, in order to speedily serve up results, Google has a huge redundant capacity of data centres about the world, and this overlap does increase its carbon footprint, since the cheapest and most easily available energy source is coal.

However, despite the fact that a Google search produces about half the amount of carbon, as a boiling kettle, the environmental concern remains due to the fact that Google handles about 200 million searches on a daily basis, environmental articles are unflatteringly calling the global IT industry ‘carbon criminals’. Journalist and writer John Naughton feels that “environmental impact of computing is one of the Next Big Stories”.

- Farrell Shah