People Bitching at Google Again

So for the first time ever, Google disclosed its electricity usage. And the figures are high. But what the fuck do people expect? Google is one of the largest companies in the world. Every time you type a search into Google they are using serious amounts of power. Think about it.

From the NY Times:
Google disclosed Thursday that it continuously uses enough electricity to power 200,000 homes, but it says that in doing so, it also makes the planet greener. 

Every time a person runs a Google search, watches a YouTube video or sends a message through Gmail, the company’s data centers full of computers use electricity. Those data centers around the world continuously draw almost 260 million watts — about a quarter of the output of a nuclear power plant. 

Up to now, the company has kept statistics about its energy use secret. Industry analysts speculate it was because the information was embarrassing and would also give competitors a clue to how Google runs its operations. 

While the electricity figures may seem large, the company asserts that the world is a greener place because people use less energy as a result of the billions of operations carried out in Google data centers. Google says people should consider things like the amount of gasoline saved when someone conducts a Google search rather than, say, drives to the library. “They look big in the small context,” Urs Hoelzle, Google’s senior vice president for technical infrastructure, said in an interview. 

How is the information embarrasing? If people want Google to use less electricity, they should use Bing instead or some shit. Google only needs power because everyone in the fucking world searches Google every second of every day. I feel like Google using a quarter of a nuclear power plant's output is pretty reasonable. They run the WHOLE WORLD people, shit needs electricity. How can they track our entire lives without power? Think about it.