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Physicist Alex Wissner-Gross says that performing two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea
Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches - Times Online
I wonder how far we could take this analysis. For example, searching for a pair of shoes on Google and ordering it from an online retailer probably is a net savings in energy vis-a-vis driving to the store. I’d bet that the net efficiencies Google brings to peoples lives translates into people being able to “do more things” overall, and thus, use more energy. Sort of how the ‘paperless office’ never came to fruition because the efficiences in digital creation resulted in more things being created, and thus printed. I remember reading a study about this somewhere…
