Google M-Lab, Gmail offline reviewed, Gdrive leaked and is Google the greenest?

Google launches Gmail Offline, measurement tools to improve the Internet and refutes inaccurate article from The Times.

Google made headlines this week by launching a new diagnostics initiative called M-Labs, released new offline Gmail service, leaked info on their secretive upcoming Gdrive service and took criticism for their large carbon footprint from their massive data centers and millions of daily searches.

Google started off the week with the introduction of M-Labs a new initiative with PlanetLab Consortium and academic researchers set to measure the quality, speed, and other factors of your Internet connection and see if you really do get what you pay for. Google described M-Labs as “an open, distributed server platform for researchers to deploy Internet measurement tools. The goal of M-Lab is to advance network research and empower the public with useful information about their broadband connections.”

M-Labs features tools such as NDT (Network Diagnostics Test), Glasnost (to determine open/closed ports such as ISP blocked BitTorrent), NPAD (last-mile test) as well as DiffProbe and Nano coming soon. There are numerous servers available to test your service and all nodes have blazing fast 1,000Mbps (Gigabit Ethernet) connections. To read more about these tools and use them, please visit the Measurement Lab directly, link following this article.

Next, leaked source code revealed that Google is indeed working on a new networked cloud storage solution that could change the way users store data. Codenamed “Gdrive,” a description of the service was spotted in a leaked JavaScript file that contained the header: “Gdrive provides reliable storage for all of your files, including photos, music, and documents. Gdrive allows you to access your files from anywhere, anytime and from any device…” Google declined to comment on the matter and quickly responded to leaked file by removing any instance of GDrive. The rumor mill indicates that Gdrive might not even be released due to a heavily saturated cloud storage market and Google’s current Picasa offering for photos and Google Apps, for files and docs.

We now move on to the new Gmail Offline feature which gives Gmail lovers a long-awaited “offline access mode” made possible by Google’s web application API, Gears. Gmail Offline allows users to read, archive and compose new email even when they lack an Internet connection. Offline mode is enabled by going to Settings → Labs and selecting the Enable radio button under “Offline.” You will be prompted to install Google Gears which is the core API behind offline mode. Much like Gears enables the Android Mobile Platform to use local resources and not require a network connection for certain functionality, Gears downloads a local cache of your Gmail data. Once you’re back from offline mode, Gear’s synchronizes the cache with Gmail’s servers. Gmail Offline also includes a “flaky connection mode” which uses the local cache as if you are disconnected but still syncs mail with the server in the background. Useful for when “you’re ‘borrowing’ your neighbors WiFi.”

Gmail Offline is officially available now and can easily be enabled by following the quick steps above. We’ve included a few screenshots of Gmail offline for some add visual help below.

Finally, we look at comments made by physics researcher Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross regarding the amount of CO2 emissions emitted by Google when doing a simple search. Last week, The Times posted a misleading article saying “two Google searches generate CO2 emissions equivalent of boiling a kettle of tea.” Wissner-Gross who is a triple major in physics, math and electrical engineering at MIT claimed that 0.02 grams of CO2 per second are released when viewing a simple Web page, rising to 0.2 grams per second when viewing complex Web pages or video.

The article quickly spread through the Internet and the false claims made by The Times were quickly disputed by Google senior vice president of operations Urs Holzle. “We thought it would be helpful to explain why this number is *many* times too high,” Holzle said. After describing how Google works, Holzle said a search requires 0.0003 kWh of energy per search, “about the same amount of energy that your body burns in ten seconds.” Dr. Wissner-Gross added that “Google [is] very efficient but their primary concern is to make searches fast and that means they have a lot of extra capacity that burns energy,” which is undeniably true.

Google says that it is on the forefront of green computing and maintained that their data centers are some of the most efficient in the world. Researchers further mentioned that a typical Google search result goes through several competing servers in order to deliver the fastest possible result to the end-user.

All in all, it was a busy week for the Internet giant with positive news coming from their Gmail offline feature, M-Labs measurement and diagnostics tools and a conclusive explanation as to why The Times was inherently wrong with their tea kettle analogy. Google continues to innovate and maintain that their energy-efficient data centers “are among the most efficient of all internet search providers.”

-Arkady Ignatov contributed to this article.

Update: Recently, Dr. Evan Mills of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Environmental Energy Technologies Division stated in his commentary that he was “quoted out of context” and that “the numbers cited in the Times article should be treated as no more than speculation by industry observers or reporters.” Of course, he’s talking about “Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches” article featured in the Times last week. The inaccurate body of work mentioned that “7 grams of carbon dioxide emissions are released per each Google web search” (or as they like to put in England “similar to boiling a cup of tea.”)

“By largely ignoring the structural changes in the economy that IT enables, the Times has painted a misleading picture of the environmental effects of IT,” stated Dr. Mills. “Indeed, driving an average car just one mile and back to the nearest library to manually search for information produces more than 100-times more greenhouse-gas emissions than a web search.”

We’ve created a link to Dr. Evan Mills’ commentary entitled: “Tempest in a Tea-kettle.”

TO enable Gmail Offline you must install Google Gears. If you don't install it, offline won't work.

After the installation is complete, you'll see a green Lab's test tube on the header