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Google Details and Defends Its Use of Electricity
theodp writes "On Thursday, Google finally provided information on its energy usage, revealing that it continuously uses enough electricity to power 200,000 homes. Still, the search giant contends that by using more power than Salt Lake City, Google actually makes the world a greener place. Google says people should consider things like the amount of gasoline saved when someone conducts a Google search rather than, say, driving to the library. As Police Chief Martin Brody might say, 'Google's going to need a bigger windmill!'"
Google is not simply using that energy, that energy is being used by google users all over the world.
Those same users are also using energy locally to connect to the internet.
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Google is also paying for their energy.
that they are investing into clean energy. Other companies run around screaming that they want coal, while Google says AE. Personally, I wish that Google would make use of some of that money to help create demand for geo-thermal energy, rather than simply investing in it. Honestly, if they insisted on buying energy directly from some geo-thermal locations, they could still manage to keep their costs low, while creating enough demand to stimulate it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You will find that humanity's desire to fill the aching void of its pitiful existence with lolcats and porn is not, in fact, our doing.
Further, because power is one of our major operating costs, you will find that our competitors are unlikely to be able to deliver lolcats and porn appreciably more efficiently than we can.
Here endeth the justification.
but rather are they using the electricity efficiently
The more relevant comparison seems like it'd be to other commercial users. It's not likely that if Google were disbanded, it would turn into residential population; it's more likely that, if we didn't have Google, we'd have other companies employing these people and occupying a certain niche of the economy.
From that perspective, is Google's energy usage high or low for a company of its market-cap / revenue / profits? For example, it has almost exactly the same market cap as Wal-Mart; how does the energy usage of the two companies compare, both in terms of overall size, and things like greenness of the source?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
That's the other side of the wire !! And Teh GOOGLE !! knows it is stealing this for nuthin !! God Save Teh GOGGLE !!
If Google really are "Carbon Neutral" and investing in "green" energy as their blog suggests, then I see no real problem with them using the amount of energy that they do. Google could certainly do more to push renewable energy resources but at the end of the day, it is not their role to do so. Eventually I'm sure the winds of change will bring about a major shift towards renewable energy resources within corporations, the less non-renewable resources available, the higher the price. Corporations are very much focussed on profit, it's inevitable that renewable energy will at some point become cheaper. For the time being though, you can't expect Google to use an infrastructure (let alone create one) that doesn't exist.
Why do we have to defend ourselves for being paying customers of the power grid! Redic, what is happening to this world! If the Government would get out of the way of the energy sector there would be no legs for this type of sh*t to stand on.
I don't have an issue with Google using more power so we lose less. I have an issue with them using it as an excuse to blame people for power usage, by going to the library. It's the responsibility of big corporations to push economical, green energy, not to push oil and coal on us and then blame the people for global warming etc.
by defending Steve Ballmer's use of oxygen.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
So it's a fair trade.
. Google says people should consider things like the amount of gasoline saved when someone conducts a Google search rather than, say, driving to the library.
Sure, because the guy who just searched Google to find out what goatse is would clearly have gone to the library to look up such trivial information had Google not been available....
They must be growing a TON of it!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
In our digital era, if it weren't for Google to offer Search, emails, video streaming, maps, etc ... another company would do it. With that in mind, the question becomes: which company offers these services in the greenest way ? I'm pretty sure Google does.
iTx Technologies: Open source development in Montreal
I think Google is worthy of such expenditures. They have transformed the way our society communicates, finds information, navigates the globe, everything.
They have done more for day-to-day human living than anything I can think of in a long time.
Let them use electricity, it's going towards something useful.
Al Gore didn't invent electricity to be wasted on the internet.
Wehen I was a kid, we were more green.
Specifically, my dad had a very cool looking light green '67 Ford Galaxie 500 with a 390 cubic inch V8. When I needed info for a report, my mom used it to drive me down to the public library, probably getting about 9 mpg. So we consumed about 20 kWh worth of fully leaded fuel to do a few simple queries. That's probably enough energy to run one of Google's server nodes for more than a week, but at least we did it in style.
I did a back-of-napkin calculation last night, and came up with about 30-33% of the energy consumption would be related to office operations, and the remainder data center operations. Their data center total came out to something like 170MW demand. Given that a 100,000 square foot data center would be expected to draw about 20MW all-in, the total was much lower than I would have expected. For some reason, I pictured their demand being much higher.
As for alternative energy, green energy, and efficiency, Google really is doing a good job. Comparing them to Bank of America, I would say Google does significantly more for the kWh.
Why is the total electricity used by Google a problem? Google has a huge network of data centers, offices and other business entities that use electricity. The total amount of electricity used is going to be huge.
The real question... has and is Google working to use that electricity wisely and with an eye to maximizing value and minimizing waste? Well from what I have read over the years the answer is Yes.
Everyone, GM, Toyota, the US government, The City of LA, and even my dear old Mom uses electricity (directly and indirectly) and it isn't the total used, but rather the waste (if any) and the strategies to maximize value out of that electricity that needs to be reported and scrutinized.
We all know this right?
we never did visit public libraries that often.. ..when i was a kid we used to go once a week.
Other kids went once a month, and others once a year, and some none at all.
I don't do google searches once a week, I do them a few times a day.
I never visited the library a few times a day, except when I was on campus at uni.
And when I think about it, I rode my bike to the library.
Using gasoline used to visit libraries is a misguided analogy.
Only a fool could imagine that the internet uses more resources than the alternative - mailing or faxing all documents, visiting various libraries in person rather than using Wikipedia and Gutenberg where possible, assembling for all semi-important meetings in person rather than teleconferencing (admittedly most organizations still don't make good use of teleconference), rural folks visiting book stores and computer stores in person rather than getting it shipped, etc.
Why don't FedEx or the New York Public Library have to defend their energy usage, given that the alternative to Google is higher usage of *their* services? Are we trying to make valid, constructive comparisons or are we just fretting about big numbers and bashing every big company with a green-washing CEO to satisfy our own self-righteousness?
Using the electricity they paid for!
Seriously, this obvious smear campaign against Google has to stop at some point, people aren't even trying anymore.
"Google says people should consider things like the amount of gasoline saved when someone conducts a Google search rather than, say, driving to the library."
This is exactly akin to Software/Content makers saying that every piracy count is exactly one lost sale. If I had to actually drive to the library, I wouldn't actually DRIVE each time I was wondering about some trivial answer to a meaningless question.
All of that said, data centers use electricity.. if we want to do anything e- or i- (or o- or u-, and sometimes y-) we need to realize that. Google is well aware of how much it spends on electricity, and I'm pretty sure they take steps to try and minimize their expenses (such as using warm-boxes instead of cooling ambient air, etc..)
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
Mud-hut GREENs can choke on it. Every kilowatt humans produce increases our cultural and individual standard of living. We burn against the everlasting night. Bytch Gaia ... the snake-goddess of ebola and rabies, ectopic pregnancy, tsunamis and mongoloids can have energy conservation shoved up her *zzwhole like a pile of burned-out coal slag mixed with the bones of toasted guilt-ridden GREENs.
+1 Informative!
It's not more power than SLC. The bogus "260MW is enough to power 200K homes" is just a throwaway number. That means the average homeowner uses around 900-1000 kwh a month. The city uses far more power for commerical buildings, lighting, transit, etc.
260 MW seems like a lot, but honestly it's barely a blip. The US used nearly near 4 trillion kwh last year. 260MW * 8760 hours/year = 2.3 billion kwh (assuming no outages), which is 0.06% of US consumption.
I've worked in the power industry for 30 years and seen a lot of misinformation, but this is Gizmodo just trying to fuck over Google.
Doesn't Google use Bloom Boxes? And my personal vex with Bloom Energy is that they don't make a small business version, (cue Sour Grapes Face).
"Windmills do not work that way!"
They help produce more AE than the total amount of energy that they use. Thats good enough enough for me. If we all did that then there would little need for coal plants.
As long as they are paying an unsubsidized price for it, or they are investing an amount same or more than whatever subsidy in the included in the bill in green tech?
reading that google uses mainly consumer hardware for their servers, lots and lots of them. Not even bothering to remove/turn off/ fix servers when hard drives go bad. Power usage is actually a pretty major concideration in enterprise gear.. I wonder if the majority of their power usage is being wasted because of this choice.
A puddle of oil takes millions of years to develop, but you would use all of its energy in days. That is not sustainable, and you'll be crying when the worldwide blackouts start.
Okay, honestly there are very few things that I look up on google that I would drive to a library to research.
My other sig is extremely clever...
If Google is paying for the electricity they can and should be able to do whatever they want with it.
If I want to I can leave every f*cking light light on in the house overnight. And who's going to pay that electricity bill for it?
If Google is paying for their electricity why should anyone give a crap over how efficient they use it?
The only company losing out on Google not being more efficient is itself. That's capitalism.
Since when does anyone have to MORALLY justify their energy usage?
Google does some shady things. Using power is not among them.
It's a commodity. They purchase it. Sheesh.
Because the "knowledge industry" is so large these days it makes a measurable impact on natural resources and the GDP.
I'd like to see a comparison to the energy usage in producing a days consumption of food or living in a house. Those numbers are nto small either.
Ok Google, most library services are delivered on-line these days--although books and music are still a bit rare right now, most are delivering reference, directory, and at least some periodical services this way. Even if they don't, call or email a reference librarian with your question. That's what they're there for.
Google is actually defending its use of electricity? It's a sugar coating job. Google is profiting from using electricity.
They shouldn't be using electricity at all.
Google may have both the most expensive and efficient supercomputer on the planet. This is not contradictory, just huge.
It is interesting that the poster used the power compared to SLC. The NSA is building a new server farm south of Salt Lake and when it was announced they talked a lot about how it would use as much power as Salt Lake City. I wonder how the server farms compare.
I don't need to go to the library, I still have those wildly popular encyclopedia CDROM's from the '90s.
Yeah, indicator species suck, fuck them.
That's why we don't let coal miners keep canaries any more.
You need to experience a Mormon girl gone wild, you'll change your opinion.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Bah, Just build a couple of Thorium reactors and let everyone use as much energy as they need.
Oh wait... the oil barons don't like that idea... one little bit !
As if there are no commercial, governmental, and industrial energy users in Salt Lake City.
200,000 homes do not use the same amount of power as a city of 186,000.
Want to save all the carbon emissions created when you search? Hold your breath.
I8-D
I'm really tired of the media knowingly and intentionally misleading their readers into assuming something. The use of absolute figures in the knowledge that most readers have no sense of scale is intentionally stating information out of context.
Jump down to paragraph 5 and the facts are made more relevant due to context:
The article subsequently seems to turn into praise about how green Google is.
I notice the Slashdot summary contains the worst of the article, thus explaining the root of the issue. It doesn't explain why to bother reading Slashdot if the summaries are going to offer no value beyond that of an RSS aggregator.
You need to experience a Mormon girl gone wild, you'll change your opinion.
Second!
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
Isn't this suppose to be about the Mormons?
If they're using that much power and everyone is going to beat up on them over carbon emissions, I'd wager they have enough money in the bank to build a few new data centers that would include their own NUCLEAR generator for electricity. That would last them until the end of the century when the world's population is supposed to be reduced to 500 million anyway. Although I don't know what sort of economy we're going to have with only 500 million people. That';s not enough to support any sort of large factory complexes, the semiconductor industry might as well fold up and we'll all be back to learning home carpentry, sewing and leather working to maintain our houses and clothe ourselves.
Actually it was found that the canaries dying caused quite a distraction for the miners getting their work done. So we had the canaries removed. You're welcome.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
It's very simple -
If someone is proselytizing (Green) e.g. Google, telling others to save energy when they, them-self are truly not - hypocrites.
If you shut your damn mouth and do your thing, mind your own business - respect.
"Do as I say, not as I do" - Al Gore
260 MW... Well, they already have contracts for 214 MW of wind energy..
http://www.google.com/green/operations/renewable-energy.html
Now, if Google would use the same software that I'm running on my webserver .. http://excalibur.hozed.org/mrtg/localpower.html .. which, by the way, is connected to the City of Ames municipal utility, which bought the another 30MW from the same Story county wind farm google got 114 from... Then their datacenters could ramp clock speeds up and down based on how much wind energy there was.
I doubt anyone would actually notice the server response time change. I expect the background/batch jobs would though.. But that's what wind forecasting is for.
Yet another dangerous grain of truth.
Detroit has long sold large, steel battering rams on the image of safety: good for you, bad for anything else you happen to impact.
There would be less escalation to large steel battering rams if people weren't made to feel unsafe by their copious production. Detroit manipulated demand more callously than most. Nice to be Krupp alternating upgrades to opposite sides, since no one wants to have last year's targeting distance in an African square dance.
Rule three: Expect a corporation to arrange for you to care most about staying ahead of the Rommels.
Knowledge is power.
I'm gonna have to call B/S on this one.
Mud-hut GREENs can choke on it. Every kilowatt humans produce increases our cultural and individual standard of living. We burn against the everlasting night. Bytch Gaia ... the snake-goddess of ebola and rabies, ectopic pregnancy, tsunamis and mongoloids can have energy conservation shoved up her *zzwhole like a pile of burned-out coal slag mixed with the bones of toasted guilt-ridden GREENs.
Hey everyone it's J.P. Rockefeller himselves!
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan