The newspaper reported that two Google searches releasing 7g of CO2 were almost the equivalent of boiling a kettle for a cup of tea. Wissner-Gross later said his work was focused on the web overall, and the example of tea kettles was not one of his.
The scale of the search engine's carbon footprint is due to the fact that the request is sent to multiple servers across the world, but only the quickest response reaches the user, according to Wissner-Gross.
"Google isn't any worse than any other data centre operator. If you want to supply a really great and fast result, then it's going to take extra energy to do so," he told the BBC.
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Posted on 29th January 2009
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