"So this is Google, I thought to myself, looking out over the employees prancing around and living their lives. The wizard's curtain has been pulled back to reveal ... not an old man, but rather a wizard even more magical than the illusion in front of the curtain."
from http://www.insanecats.com/cgi-bin/month.py?month=jun06
Somewhat theatrical but it does capture the feeling here. :)
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Green computing
One thing notable about Google in general and about the Mountain View campus in particular is the exceptional emphasis on environmental responsibility. California in general is quite hot on recycling, but for every refuse bin at Google (often labelled "Landfill" to remind you where it's going) there's at least one recycling one - plastics, glass, paper, you name it. Bins for the safe disposal of batteries, bins for the disposal (recycling?) of printer cartridges. Buses, minibuses, and coaches for shared transport; electric vehicles; free bikes, not just pools of cheap+cheerful ones for trips between buildings/sites but proper commuter bikes too.
They've also got one of the largest corporate solar-panel installations in the US too, which allegedly generates an amazing 30% of their peak power consumption. See their website about it.
The clutch of articles a few weeks back making various suppositions about how much energy a Google search consumes (comparing it with the boiling of a kettle) certainly didn't escape my attention. The Times, it seems, published a somewhat poorly researched article and ended up with quite a lot of egg on their face. Even aside from Google's (predictable) rebuttal, the ensuing chaos spawned quite a number of scathing and humorous articles. Sadly the Times article in question which started this whole furore off ("Google and you'll destroy the planet", Jan 11th) is no longer available online. Not, at least, without paying them to search their archives, something which I certainly have no inclination to do! My favourite bit is the final update to Google's response to all this:
They've also got one of the largest corporate solar-panel installations in the US too, which allegedly generates an amazing 30% of their peak power consumption. See their website about it.
The clutch of articles a few weeks back making various suppositions about how much energy a Google search consumes (comparing it with the boiling of a kettle) certainly didn't escape my attention. The Times, it seems, published a somewhat poorly researched article and ended up with quite a lot of egg on their face. Even aside from Google's (predictable) rebuttal, the ensuing chaos spawned quite a number of scathing and humorous articles. Sadly the Times article in question which started this whole furore off ("Google and you'll destroy the planet", Jan 11th) is no longer available online. Not, at least, without paying them to search their archives, something which I certainly have no inclination to do! My favourite bit is the final update to Google's response to all this:
"Update on 1/16 @ 1 PM: The Sunday Times clarified its article on the energy consumed by a Google search, accepting our calculation that a single search accounts for about 0.2g of carbon. That means a typical individual's Google use for an entire year would produce about the same amount of CO2 as just a single load of washing."Whilst my visit to Mountain View is an exception, they also encourage video-conferencing as an alternative to travel wherever possible (vital for a company as spread out as this). Just as well for me that my physical attendance here was deemed sufficiently worthwhile! :)
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