Google said yesterday that their infrastructure demands the same amount of electricity which could power 200,000 homes. They have defended their claims however, saying by doing so, they are making the planet ‘greener'.

Every time you search for something in Google, or watch a Youtube video the servers demand some power. According to reports, the data centers globally use 260 million watts, almost a quarter the output of a nuclear power plant.

Until very recently, Google have kept the statistics on their power consumption very quiet. According to the nytimes, they claim industry analysts thought the information was 'embarassing' and would give ‘competitors a clue to how Google runs its operations.'

The power drain is phenomenal, but Google say that the world is a greener place due to people using less energy as a result of billions of operations carried out by the Google owned data centers. They highlight energy saving when people search for something online, rather than driving out to a library to get a book.

Google's senrior vice president for technical infrastructure Urs Hoelzle said “They look big in the small context.” People are being urged to look at the ‘big picture'.

Google claim that people carry out a billion searches every day along with other requests and queries. Google design and build their own data center servers from the ground up, using energy saving chips and software. They say that the average search request uses 0.3 watt hours of electricity.

Kitguru says: efficient for the workload?

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