From an interview with Dr Alex Wissner-Gross (UK Times) For a typical website experience, the dominant contribution to its footprint comes from the electricity consumed by its visitors' computers, followed by the network infrastructure needed to transmit the website, with the servers and data centers providing the website as the smallest contributor.

Many prominent sites are, however, increasing emissions through software errors and other problems, which increase the time - and energy - needed to access them. The emphasis on Google in the articles seems to be rather misleading. Google isn't really the issue - it's the entire structure of the web, including personal computers, networks, as well as the server farms.

Since electricity for PCs is the dominant factor, the most effective response would be energy-efficient PCs and turning them off when not in use. Turning to green sources of electricity would reduce the carbon footprint.

Dr. Wissner-Gross's point about the inefficiency of much web software is a good one. It's all too easy to design a website to be an energy hog. That's one of the reasons I've argued against needless complexity in website design. Simple interfaces also reduce the time you spend waiting for an article to display.

Bart
Energy Bulletin