Professor: Two Google searches generate as much carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle of water

Performing a single Google query on a desktop computer can generates about 7g of CO2, according to Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist. Boiling a kettle of water takes up only slightly more, which at about 15g of CO2 roughly equates to two Google searches.

Wissner-Gross does not disagree with Google's response that the company is "among the most efficient of all Internet search providers." However, he also notes that because Google's search engine aims to return the fastest search results possible, it requires a lot of extra capacity, which in turn wastes energy.

Upon receipt of a search term, for example, the request doesn't go to just one server. Instead, the search term goes to several servers, which compete against each other to return results in the shortest possible time. In fact, the search terms might even be sent to servers located in data centers thousands of miles apart.

While only the results from the fastest server are actually returned to the user, the discarded results from the slower servers also cost energy to generate. Google has servers in the US, Europe, Japan and China.

Measuring carbon dioxide emissions however, is a slippery slope. Does it mean that we might be taxed in the future, based on how much carbon we consume by twittering, playing a computer game, or even writing this article?

For more on this story:
- check out this article from Times Online

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