Ethical and Green

Google is a company that has ethical and green credentials- or so we thought!  Recent research by Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist has shown that using Google can actually harm the environment.

Google likes to pride itself at being at the forefront of green computing.  There are tools on Google that allow you to calculate your carbon footprint and it is a supporter of Earth Day that highlights environmental issues.  (Interestingly though you will be hard pressed to find figures on the size of its carbon footprint or energy consumption.)  So how can a company that is going green actually be harmful to the environment?

The problem lies in the way Google works. Using a search engine generates CO2 emissions because the search request goes to more than one server that can be thousands of miles apart.  Google have servers in the US, Europe, Japan and China.  It has been estimated that the number of internet searches in a day is around 200 million.  Can you imagine the electricity consumption and greenhouse gases that this releases?  It’s estimated that the global IT industry has a carbon footprint similar to that of the airline industry.  That is to say that the IT industry could account for as much as 2% of global CO2 emissions.

Google’s response?  They feel that they are amongst the most energy efficient search engine out there.  However in order to get the fastest search you have to offset the fact that this releases more CO2 emissions.  Perhaps the most interesting statistic comes from John Buckley of www.carbonfootprint.com.  They feel that doing a Google search can emit anywhere between 1 and 10g of CO2 depending on whether or not the computer had to be switched on.  Others have put this figure at 7g to 10g.

So are we going to stop using Google for our searches?  Ethical and Green doubt it very much.  The figures show that using search engines in general cause an increase in CO2 emissions.  This is not going to change until companies such as Google look into their processes to make them more energy efficient.  Google is committed to reducing its carbon footprint and therefore you can expect their searches to be the most efficient out there.