That’s right, the major search engines, Yahoo and Google have decided to lower the emissions on their search vehicles. In a plan to fight global warming, Yahoo has announced its aggressive plan to go carbon neutral starting in the later part of 2007.
The search giant’s desire to make a smaller environmental footprint started in October 2005, when Yahoo measured its carbon dioxide output at that time. Now, Yahoo is going clean by purchasing green power in California, using power management controls and offering employee incentives to reduce energy consumption. Yahoo is even soliciting the public for ideas on how to lower its carbon dioxide emissions through its Yahoo Answers feature. To date there have been 456 replies to Yahoo’s query.
Google, on the other hand, has also taken steps towards being a green search vehicle. At the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, the largest commercial deployment of solar panels have hit the rooftops there totaling 1.6 megawatts in power or enough to provide energy for 1,000 California homes. Google is also buying cafeteria food from local growers and using paint without harmful toxic compounds.
With Yahoo and Google leading the way for environmentally friendly search engines, it’s only a matter of time before the smaller search vehicles jump onboard as well. In addition, it will be interesting to see whether Yahoo or Google becomes the first search engine to align themselves with hydrogen cars, using them as fleet vehicles around their compounds.
If you’re going to go green, this would be the logical next step, now wouldn’t it?