Google has been making milestones, trying to help the planet go green. I always imagined those big server farms must be sucking energy like black hole. But my thoughts was proved wrong and even though these servers do draw energy, per user per month, it is much less than, in Google's words, a light bulb left on for three hours. I am not sure if it an incandescent, CFL or the ridiculously expensive bu efficient LED bulb that we just started using. In either case it is a lot less energy usage than running your own servers, specially for small business'.
Either was Google as one of the largest cloud service providers in the world, saving energy wastage and we reported yesterday how much energy GMail and YouTube Saving. But the story does not stop there and even the little energy per user mentioned above, is offset by Google's Carbon offset program, Google has been carbon neutral since 2007.
Google also has set the path for other big boys to go green sooner than later, Microsoft, Yahoo followed the Google footsteps and even got competitive in setting up green initiatives.
Google also invests heavily on green energy, like the investment on Geothermal energy, renewable energy projects, and so on.
I am glad, that I am / we are using Google services to the fullest, ok not the fullest but as much as we could.
Official Google Blog: How our cloud does more with less
