From Ecopedia

Overview

Founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page (“Google guys”) and incorporated in 1998, Google Inc. is a public multinational corporation, involved in providing cloud computing as well as internet search services, besides offering a wide range of products such as Google Chrome and Picassa software.

Google’s web-based search engine is the most popular search service offered to customers across the globe. With a US market share of 65.6%, Google is the most dominant and most visited search engine, processing more than a billion search requests every day.^[1]

Apart from hosting and developing numerous internet-based products and services, Google also offers an advertising platform called AdWords, the primary profit source for the company.

From the outset, Google primarily aimed at organizing global information in a universally accessible manner.

Environmental Perspective

Effects on the environment

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Cloud Computing

Google’s extensive use of cloud computing technologies met serious criticism from various environmental groups, which objected to the company’s extensive reliance on environmentally-hazardous cloud computing.

Cloud computing technology is an advanced internet technology that allows computer users to gain access to a “cloud” of web-enabled online networking services such as video streaming and other social networking sites such as the Google’s Orkut and the Facebook. Compared to other computing technologies, cloud computing is found to leave a much bigger carbon footprint on the environment.

Increased reliance on cloud computing for various online services would, thus, inevitably result in a greater demand for non-renewable coal-power, which is a major cause for the dreadful global warming phenomenon.

Energy Consumption

Google operates more than a million data center servers across the world, producing user-generated data of twenty petabytes per day. Google utilizes high amounts of energy to maintain and operate the servers. Such high energy consumption levels would only contribute to the already increasing global warming pollution.

A typical Google search is supposed to generate approximately 7g of the dangerous Carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas that is responsible for the globally-alarming greenhouse effect, which causes global warming.^[2]

Green Initiatives

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In an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Google pledged to invest in cleaner and cheaper green technologies that embark on renewable energies such as the solar energy. In recent times, Google spent $39 Million USD in solar power by installing solar panels in the company’s Mountain View facilities.^[3]

References

1. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google
2. ↑ http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece
3. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google