How Google Is Turning The Internet Into A Virtual Landfill

Internet users click on Google ads more than 100 Million times a day, resulting in advertising revenues of more than $12 Billion for the company in the 2nd quarter of 2015. While advertisers have been very public about the fact that few of these clicks resulted in any sales the environmental effects of these wasted efforts have made fewer headlines.

How Google Is Turning The Internet Into A Virtual Landfill

Via linkedin.com

In a June 2007 blog post Google claims in to be ‘carbon neutral’ by the end of the year. However in a 2011 white paper published by the company it states “we will continue to purchase carbon offsets to bring our carbon footprint down to zero."

However, according to a Harvard Study a single Google search produces around 7g of carbon dioxide (CO2). Using that number Google advertising clicks alone result in almost 280 Million tons of carbon emissions each year. To put this number in perspective only two States (California and Texas) produce more CO2 emissions a year than what Google ads produce.

Advertisers claim that less than 5% of their Google ad clicks result in any sales. This numbers are similar to those of the pre-Internet era where large percentages of our landfills were made up of four-color snail mail ad inserts. Ads that were never read by any consumer but made their way directly from the mailbox into a trash can. Like the US postal service in the past filled our mailboxes with junk Google is now filling our screens to World Wide Web with ads the majority of consumer do not have use for.

So, while less obvious for the everyday Internet user Google is responsible for waste without having anything to show for – other than corporate profit that is.

What you can do? If you are an iPhone user turn on the Adblock feature and get and use an ad-blocker when browsing the Internet such as the one offered by NoSheeps (free for the first 1,000 visitors).