From: Daily Mail

Google uses MORE power than Salt Lake City as vast data farms suck up electricity

Google has revealed how much energy it consumes to power YouTube, Gmal and its other services in the internet ‘cloud’ – and it’s enough to power the capital of Utah.

But bosses behind the search engine giant have launched a defence of the unprecedented reveal of its energy consumption.

According to Google Senior Vice-President Urs Hoelzle, the company has maintained a carbon-neutral imprint since 2007.

Google added the figures in ‘The Big Picture’ section of its Google Green website on Thursday.

The numbers show Google’s data centers use 260million watts – enough to power a city of 100,000 to 200,000 people, reports tech blog Gizmodo.

Salt Lake City, Utah, by comparison, has a population of 186,440.

According to the data, 100 searches on Google.com uses equal power to light a 60 watt bulb for 28 minutes; it said three days of streaming YouTube video requires as much energy as making, packaging and delivering a DVD.

A year of providing free Gmail email service to a user takes less energy than drinking a bottle of wine, stuffing a message in the empty vessel and tossing it in an ocean.

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