The world's GREENEST search engine

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CritiKill

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Let's face the facts...Google's model is soooooo 20th century...what we need is 21st century solutions to fix the 20th century capitalism that has led the world into a dark, lonely place. For all the good and wonderful free stuff Google provides us with, the facts remain: the company has a carbon footprint of at least 1.5 MILLION tons per annum (and growing steadily); they enrich a small group of people (read up on the Occupy movements sweeping this world and why crony/closed-system-capitalism is a legacy of the 20th century we desperately need to change); closes entire vertical markets in which it has no interest in profiting from; are guilty of abusing their monopoly on more than one occasion and have grown too powerful for their own good (for more info on this checkout www.googleopoly.net).

So, how do you compete with Google? Develop a search engine that is relevant; built on similar technology (Hadoop and Hypertable); can be scaled infinitely; runs exclusively on green energy; incentivise searches through the planting of trees; create MASSIVE employment in the process and do things decidedly differently...that's how!

Introducing the world's GREENEST search engine - www.greensrch.com

If you care about the planet and think the world is worth saving, I suggest you bookmark that page and make it your default search engine. It's a South African startup linked to www.ads4trees.com - the world's greenest ad network.

Basically you register, login and for every 500 "valid" searches which you do, the company will plant 1 tree in your name. It's still early days and the system is being worked on as we speak as bugs are being worked on and ironed out...read the "About Us" for more info though.

Your comments and feedback are always welcome and appreciated.
 
Google made me a genius.

Also, that small group Google are enriching? Guess what - they SPEND a lot of that money which trickles down into the rest of the economy too. Google pays tax on that profit - tax which goes to social upliftment programmes, social security etc.

Don't paint them as bad just because you hope to compete with them.
 
Green search engine LOL

seriously i doubt the google engine is going to cause the planet to heat and kill us all, that would be the sun.

This green stuff is getting beyond ridiculous.
 
Responses...

ghoti said:
Google has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in renewable energy.... thats better than planting a tree.

http://www.google.com/green
Click to expand...

Well for starters, maybe you missed this little memo:

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/11/23/google-ends-effort-to-make-cheap-renewable-solar-energy/

@ Killadoob - the fact remains that every time you search Google you cause a chain reaction in servers, hard-drives, routers and a million other electrical devices along the way. If these are not powered by green energy, then they're contributing towards global warming...and by proxy...so are you. Heck, even your PC is using electricity that is harming our planet. GreenSrch.com allows you to offset your carbon footprint by contributing to the planting of trees. Trees are nature's best defense against greenhouse gases and are still the cheapest, most effective way for us to remove carbon from the atmosphere...to say this is not a worthwhile exercise to at least TRY to save the world says alot about your personal brand of human parasitism...you can downplay it all you want, global warming is a reality...the cause is excess carbon in the atmosphere and planting trees is our best defense against it.


What's a "valid" search?

We're constantly trying to refine and redefine this but we will have a rock solid answer on this within a week or two. For now, the system does not count more than one search ever 5 minutes as we're trying to prevent people from gaming the system by flooding our servers with searches and trying to get trees planted. The tree-planting with which we incentivise use of GreenSrch come at a material cost and like Amazon's Mechanical Turks model (https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome) we plant trees in various parts of the world, including right here in SA, on the outskirts of Johannesburg. We do not use any mechanised equipment in our reforestation projects so our projects are labour intensive and require human effort...which is part of our employment creation goals to alleviate poverty and involve local communities.

Thanks for the comments and feedback...keep it coming ;-)
 
Mila said:
But Google Is my FWEND
Click to expand...

No, that's Facebook.

What bugs me is what is a 'valid search'? Suppose I happen to do 500 'invalid searches', will someone notice and rip a tree out?
 
CritiKill said:
Well for starters, maybe you missed this little memo:

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/11/23/google-ends-effort-to-make-cheap-renewable-solar-energy/
Click to expand...

Well I missed that specific article because its on fox news... not in a habit of reading that. However I do know of this story.... So they cut a few programs that were probably performing badly. That still does not mean they have not invested hundreds of millions in renewable energy. So... do you have a more valid point... and not something so easily dismissed?

Ill keep supporting the people who can do the most good, and in this case, Google wins hands down.

I also see they are hosting in a normal german datacenter. Sis... Google`s data centers use 50% less energy. These people are not even addressing the cause of the carbon issues... theyre simply applying a tiny band aid to a gaping wound.

There is a green datacenter located in germany that they could have hosted at.... well a greener one... they could at least have had the decency to go there, but right now they are not dealing with the issues correctly. If they got as big as google then they would be creating more pollution than google because they have not invested in the tech to reduce their energy requirements on the volumes that google has to deal with.

This was released in december:

We’ve made a new $94 million investment in a portfolio of four solar photovoltaic (PV) projects being built by Recurrent Energy near Sacramento, California. This brings our portfolio of clean energy investments to more than $915 million. We’ve already committed to providing funding this year to help more than 10,000 homeowners install solar PV panels on their rooftops. But this investment represents our first investment in the U.S. in larger scale solar PV power plants that generate energy for the grid—instead of on individual rooftops. These projects have a total capacity of 88 MW, equivalent to the electricity consumed by more than 13,000 homes.
Click to expand...
http://googlegreenblog.blogspot.com...(Google+Green)&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

Places where Google is currently invested in with its massive contributions to renewable resources: http://www.google.com/green/collaborations/investments.html
 
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So if we exclude the trees planted in peoples names, is Greensrch carbon neutral or where does it lie on the scale?
 
CritiKill said:
Let's face the facts...Google's model is soooooo 20th century...what we need is 21st century solutions to fix the 20th century capitalism that has led the world into a dark, lonely place. For all the good and wonderful free stuff Google provides us with, the facts remain: the company has a carbon footprint of at least 1.5 MILLION tons per annum (and growing steadily); they enrich a small group of people (read up on the Occupy movements sweeping this world and why crony/closed-system-capitalism is a legacy of the 20th century we desperately need to change); closes entire vertical markets in which it has no interest in profiting from; are guilty of abusing their monopoly on more than one occasion and have grown too powerful for their own good (for more info on this checkout www.googleopoly.net).

So, how do you compete with Google? Develop a search engine that is relevant; built on similar technology (Hadoop and Hypertable); can be scaled infinitely; runs exclusively on green energy; incentivise searches through the planting of trees; create MASSIVE employment in the process and do things decidedly differently...that's how!

Introducing the world's GREENEST search engine - www.greensrch.com

If you care about the planet and think the world is worth saving, I suggest you bookmark that page and make it your default search engine. It's a South African startup linked to www.ads4trees.com - the world's greenest ad network.

Basically you register, login and for every 500 "valid" searches which you do, the company will plant 1 tree in your name. It's still early days and the system is being worked on as we speak as bugs are being worked on and ironed out...read the "About Us" for more info though.

Your comments and feedback are always welcome and appreciated.
Click to expand...

Right, simple question.. Have they calculated their carbon footprint SHOULD the guys have the same search volumes and products as Google?

MY guess is that this search engine will not be as "green" as google in that instance.
 
rorz0r said:
So if we exclude the trees planted in peoples names, is Greensrch carbon neutral or where does it lie on the scale?
Click to expand...

GreenSrch is run exclusively on hydro-electric energy from a data-centre in Europe. We have 200TB of space available for indexes and we hope to max-out at 1 petabyte of indexes. Anything beyond that is in our opinion, superfluous and unnecessary...after all...how many people do you know that actually give a rat's arse about the 10 million results that their Google search returned...and only ever look at the first 3-4 pages. Our approach to search will be different and our algorithms human-powered in the same vein as Amazon Turks...again...for the creation of employment.

All our servers will only ever run on green electricity and so, not only do we have zero carbon footprint, but because we plant so many trees, we're carbon negative and we help our users get carbon-negative as well.
 
Blackle - Black version of Google (http://www.blackle.com)

Apparently a screen that displays a light or white screen uses more energy then a screen that displays a dark or black screen (esp. LED LCD screens).

Here's the info:
Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy. Blackle searches are powered by Google Custom Search.

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. "Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen." Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.

Blackle is always looking for new ways to encourage everyone to take steps in their everyday lives to be more environmentally conscious. To further this goal we are launching Blackle Mag where we will share tips, new green products and services and the latest eco news from around the world. Blackle Mag will be launching soon, but in the mean time please sign up now so that we can let you know when it goes live.
Click to expand...
 
shinji said:
Blackle - Black version of Google (http://www.blackle.com)

Apparently a screen that displays a light or white screen uses more energy then a screen that displays a dark or black screen (esp. LED LCD screens).

Here's the info:
Click to expand...

Kak, unless the monitor turns off the LED or CFL backlighting behind the dark pixels.

May be the case with CRTs, but those are wasteful energy hungry beasts in any case.
 
CritiKill said:
Well for starters, maybe you missed this little memo:

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/11/23/google-ends-effort-to-make-cheap-renewable-solar-energy/
Click to expand...

:erm: Google has abandoned an ambitious project to make renewable energy cheaper than coal - they haven't abandoned renewable energy:

We’ve made a new $94 million investment in a portfolio of four solar photovoltaic (PV) projects being built by Recurrent Energy near Sacramento, California. This brings our portfolio of clean energy investments to more than $915 million. We’ve already committed to providing funding this year to help more than 10,000 homeowners install solar PV panels on their rooftops. But this investment represents our first investment in the U.S. in larger scale solar PV power plants that generate energy for the grid—instead of on individual rooftops. These projects have a total capacity of 88 MW, equivalent to the electricity consumed by more than 13,000 homes.

Solar panels at one of the Recurrent projects
We’re investing alongside global investment firm KKR and Recurrent Energy, a leading solar developer. Google will provide a $94 million equity investment and SunTap Energy, a new venture formed today by KKR to invest in solar projects in the U.S., will provide the remaining equity. We’re joining KKR on their first renewable energy investment in the U.S. We believe investing in the renewable energy sector makes business sense and hope clean energy projects continue to attract new sources of capital to help the world move towards a more sustainable energy future.

The energy produced by these projects is already contracted for 20 years with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). SMUD recently created a feed-in tariff program (FIT) to help green the grid for Sacramento-area residents. We’re excited that these projects are the first to be built under the program.

We’ve had a busy year at Google. Since January, we’ve invested more than $880 million in clean energy projects. We believe the world needs a wide range of solutions—from wind, to transmission, to solar PV and concentrated solar—and we look forward to new opportunities next year to further expand our portfolio of clean energy investments.
Click to expand...
http://googlegreenblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/ending-year-with-another-clean-energy.html

While planting trees is good, I don't think you can get away with making google out to be a big bad environmentally damaging company
 
@OP -
So do all your servers come from manufacturing plants that have zero emissions? Are they carbon neutral?
Was your building constructed "green?"
What is your opinion on the google headquarters that has most of its roof covered in solar panels?
Or how about their employee transport systems, saving people from using their own cars, hence reducing emissions?
Or how they reduced oil consumption in their back up generators by 67%...
Or how they avoided buying thousands of new servers by simply retasking the old ones...
etc, etc, etc

Methinks you dont know the half of what google does to be "green" but since it competes your search engine, you are willing to ignore it
 
CritiKill said:
Let's face the facts...Google's model is soooooo 20th century...what we need is 21st century solutions to fix the 20th century capitalism that has led the world into a dark, lonely place.
Click to expand...

Twaddle. See the article I posted below:

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/403403-Farewell-to-the-Free-Market-City-Journal

and thus, I'll stick to Google.

PS: It's ironic you are here trying to compete with Google, and freely competing is the hallmark of Capitalism. Say one thing and do another?!
 
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