• TechCrunch , Tuesday, January 13, 2009 11:46 AM

Not satisfied with simply dismissing this weekend's article in The Sunday (London) Times on the carbon footprint of a single Google search, TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid decides to interview the young physicist quoted in the Times story himself. He finds that the Times report was, at the very least, misleading.

In the article, Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross says "that performing two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea." In the TechCrunch report, Wissner-Gross reveals that he never actually said anything of the sort. For starters, the American says he would never refer to any sort of measurement having to do with tea--he'd go with coffee instead. He also said that his findings use more generalized stats, like a computer's rate of CO2 production when you look at a Web page, rather than focusing on a single company like Google. Finally, he adds that the 7 grams of CO2 per search figure actually came from another source, not him-even though the report makes it sound like he said it.

Wissner-Gross confirms that he did say that "a Google search has a definite environmental impact" and that "Google operates huge data centers around the world that consume a great deal of power." He also says he contacted the Times about the misleading story and was assured that it would be fixed by Sunday morning. It was not, Kincaid says.

Read the whole story at TechCrunch »