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- bigpun, on 02/20/2009, -2/+1840.2 seconds is blisteringly fast considering the sheer size of the index and the number of machines involved. That's some excellent optimization Google!
- inkyblue2, on 02/20/2009, -0/+129how is this supposed to be "embarrassing" as the article states? it's quite possible that the total amount of cpu time per query has dropped even though the number of machines per query has increased. not to mention the decreased mechanical wear and power usage due to eliminating hard drive access from the process. without knowing the details of what happens behind the scenes, it's impossible to know how these factors affect energy per query.
- EmperorChow, on 02/20/2009, -0/+92I feel very powerful when I press the "Google Search" button now
- webyatri, on 02/20/2009, -2/+82Ask Jeeves used no computers just one guy called Jeeves.
- m4fia117, on 02/20/2009, -2/+66Copied from site:
I don’t think you’re reaching the right conclusion. Marissa was not saying that 1000 machines are dedicated for 0.2 seconds to a single query. It’s, “Over the course of 0.2 seconds, 1000 machines are involved in the processing of each query.” But the amount of time spent on each machine is probably much less. See this Reddit comment: link
Honestly, it is a comment on your disregard for truth (or your credulity, not sure which one is worse) that you could publish this article without realizing that it’s absolutely impossible for a company of Google’s size to spend 200 machine seconds on each query. It would require millions of dedicated machines at a cost of billions of dollars. It might not even be possible if web search was the only thing Google did with all their machines, and it completely outside the realm of possibility when you consider that not all their machines are dedicated to search.
Dugg down for falseness. - holzp, on 02/20/2009, -3/+61Google eats turds like digg for breakfast.
- JoaoPe, on 02/20/2009, -1/+43Sure, because 1000 machines just handle 1 query at time! I'm used to wait in line for about 2 ou 3 hours after pressing search.
Those machines handle millions of queries/second. So .0003KWh is not that far from true. - sousademiami, on 02/20/2009, -1/+40Finally someone with a brain large enough to read the article, now if only someone with a brain large enough to write it was on the other end.
- apocalypselater, on 02/20/2009, -1/+38"holding the complete search index in memory"
Holy *****! - Bhatch514, on 02/20/2009, -3/+33I feel a little gluttonous now when i query a web page from a Google search, rather then just typing in the www.@@@@@@@.com site.
- wikinews45, on 02/20/2009, -7/+35Glad they told me. Think I'll do more googling and use some of the power. What was that about .0003KWh of energy?
- roodammy44, on 02/20/2009, -0/+25Edit (From the google blog):
Queries vary in degree of difficulty, but for the average query, the servers it touches each work on it for just a few thousandths of a second. Together with other work performed before your search even starts (such as building the search index) this amounts to 0.0003 kWh of energy per search, or 1 kJ. For comparison, the average adult needs about 8000 kJ a day of energy from food, so a Google search uses just about the same amount of energy that your body burns in ten seconds.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/powering-go ... - UselessTrivia, on 02/20/2009, -0/+23So basically Google must be keeping all or most of their search data in RAM. Something like a spanning tree that hits each node until one says "i've got it" and then retrieves some data from disk.
To those spouting off about energy efficiency, it's only inefficient if those machines could otherwise be consolidated to achieve a similar performance. Either that or suffer slower search times. I'm betting all 1000 of those systems are busy pretty much all the time. - skyshock1, on 02/20/2009, -1/+22The article was cool until the end where they started in with sensationalist *****.
"This revelation may be a bit embarrassing for Google, which has defended its ecological record in the past, claiming that a single Google query takes just 0.0003KWh of energy and that the Google datacenters are "the world’s most efficient.""
I fail to see how this is embarrassing for Google. The number of servers used for a single query doesn't make their claims of energy efficiency any less valid, especially considering those 1000 servers are only used for 0.2 seconds for a single query. How much energy is used by 1000 servers in 0.2 secods? Most likely 0.0003KWh of energy. - npsken, on 02/20/2009, -1/+21Jeeves retired...
- IRAcarbombs, on 02/20/2009, -3/+21Would be interesting to see the differences between Yahoo, Google and ASK Jeeves.
- drr104, on 02/20/2009, -0/+18Perhaps those 1,000 machines handle more than one query in the 0.2s?
- efitz11, on 02/20/2009, -3/+21i don't understand some people. they use my computer and i see that they had just typed "Youtube" into the google search bar. why can't you just type youtube.com in the address bar? or youtube shift+enter? or even just youtube! i don't get it!
/rant - whoisgregg, on 02/20/2009, -0/+14In addition to the already revealed error, the author also gets this part wrong:
"This revelation may be a bit embarrassing for Google, which has defended its ecological record in the past, claiming that a single Google query takes just 0.0003KWh of energy and that the Google datacenters are "the world’s most efficient."
Google made that claim just a month ago, when they were already using *up to* 1,000 machines per query. The keynote upon which the author is making their claims was talking about current practices, not future practices.
Dugg down for inadequate fact checking. - FKnight, on 02/20/2009, -0/+11Article was great until he stated that Google should be embarrassed. Buried as the author of the article has no idea what he's talking about. Google processes more than one query at a time.
- dstz, on 02/20/2009, -0/+9Firefox's address bar is excellent at recalling the sites you mostly use according to frequency of use and what letter(s) you prefer to use for them. As an example for me "i" is for a music forum homepage, "im" for imageshack, "i-" for price comparison site. If you add the search tools in your firefox search bar (amazon, wiki, torrents, youtube, imdb, metacritic, whatever...) you basically have no need to go through Google except for proper searches. Saves a lot of time too.
- GliTCH82, on 02/20/2009, -0/+7The Google blog fails to mention their eventual plan to use people to run their system since biologically converting energy is much more efficient.
- blueplanet, on 02/20/2009, -0/+6Dugg for Happy Gilmore reference?
- awtripp, on 02/20/2009, -0/+6I get forty rods to the hogs head and that's the way I likes it!
- aaabbbsss, on 02/20/2009, -0/+6She must secretely visit porn sites behind your back and is use to not using the address bar to protect herself.
- anthropodeus, on 02/20/2009, -2/+8head over to america. they use ridiculously outdated standards there.
- brundlefly76, on 02/20/2009, -2/+8Google mentioned that *some* queries would use 1000 machines, these would be rarer and more complex queries which are uncached.
The vast bulk of popular and simple queries are always cached and likely do not require more than one machine. They might not even hit google, but instead an edge caching appliance at an ISP.
If you were to search for NY Post Cartoon, Chimp Attack, facebook, barack obama or government bailout this week, none of those queries are using more than one machine.
I wouldn't worry about the energy used, the technique they are using and the fact that they are caching the results for so many other people makes their indexing and search results far more efficient than any other search system you are probably currently using.
For example, think of the amount of energy your PC needs to use to index your local disks for fast searches - in relation to how often you as a single user will be performing queries, and how likely any given search you perform day to day is likely to be cached - now *thats* inefficient.
Having multiple search engines is inefficient too - for example Yahoo! and MSN Search duplicating all of the 24/7 webcrawling and indexing that Google does. If would be a good idea if they would, at the very least, share crawlers. - greenzrx, on 02/20/2009, -0/+6i think you meant to say:
youtube ctrl+enter
shift+enter appends .net instead of .com - dmazzoni, on 02/20/2009, -0/+6MapReduce is what Google uses to build its search index and compute things like PageRank. It's not the same as the software Google uses to execute real-time search queries.
- donkevin, on 02/20/2009, -0/+5I highly doubt they use servers that take 500 watts. They buy cheap parts and just replace them with newer, better cheap parts when they replace them. I'm thinking MAYBE 100 watts per server, but probably less.
- sgmeyer, on 02/20/2009, -0/+5Do you actually believe the things you are writing?
- donkevin, on 02/20/2009, -3/+8Google eats turds for breakfast?
- DarthTater, on 02/20/2009, -0/+5just youtube in the address bar before firefox 3 also makes a google query. The difference is that the browser redirected to the best possible result (feeling lucky)
- barfooz, on 02/20/2009, -0/+5But it is awesome all the same.
- aaabbbsss, on 02/20/2009, -0/+4how do you gave a beer with someone?
- specialK16, on 02/20/2009, -1/+5I bet you can do it much better.
- monarch00, on 02/20/2009, -4/+8Holy Friggin Crap
- Nephersir7, on 02/20/2009, -0/+3Dugg for the awesomeness of Google, not the stupid article that should never had ventured beyond facts
- nkassi, on 02/20/2009, -2/+5MapReduce! You can read their paper on it and build your own blistering fast index searching tool
- DiggRage, on 02/20/2009, -0/+3I use Firefox.
Control-L = go to address bar
Control-K = go to search bar
Very easy, very fast. - enderklein, on 02/20/2009, -0/+37
- replaysMike, on 02/20/2009, -0/+3does that mean I get my porn faster?
- junkneo, on 02/20/2009, -0/+3You cannot have it both ways. Do you want to find the right link faster or get search results similar to Yahoo and MSN.
- cornelje, on 02/21/2009, -0/+3it gets embarrassing when people use my computer and after typing an s, spankwire comes up
- takamichinaku, on 02/20/2009, -1/+4Buried for inaccuracy and dumbness.
It should be noted that once the queries are repeated those 1000 machines are not used again and again.
There is something called as cache. - PointAndClick, on 02/20/2009, -1/+4Because it takes less energy to:
1. type a single keyword
2. tab
3. tab
4. enter
than it does to:
1. move hands from keyboard to mouse
2. click address bar
3. move hands back to keyboard
4. type address
5. hit enter
Not only are there fewer steps in the first process, but they are less exerting.
I'm all about efficiency. - vuke69, on 02/20/2009, -1/+4You just made my head hurt...
- xxNIRVANAxx, on 02/21/2009, -0/+2Did you rip the hair out of your skull in shock?
- xaxxon, on 02/20/2009, -1/+3trolling will get you nowhere, boner79. Was boner69 already taken? :)
- silvershadow21, on 02/20/2009, -1/+3A kWh is a unit of power, not energy. If you have .0003kWh of power over .2 seconds though, that's 1.67x10^-8 joules. Just saying.
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