Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Is Green Web Hosting a Scam?

By Lance Leipheimer Roy Hayles Jay Newman

Web hosting is a major business generating field in the IT industry. For web hosting to take place, the companies use huge servers. These servers are managed in the datacenters of the web host companies. Green web hosting is when the data centers are powered by renewable energy or alternative energy sources. In addition to this, green web hosts also require taking eco-friendly measures such as waste recycling, planting of trees, purchasing Renewable Energy Certificates and many other possible measures so that the customers can be sure that the services they receive are not at the cost of the destruction of planet earth.

Green web hosting was not a popular term before a decade. But now, it has grown up to be the latest trend among the web hosting companies. The green movement has been adopted by most of the multinational companies as a marketing tool. We all know it is a business trick. It is well worth wondering that if the customers of all these companies changed into a green life style, it will amount to a great contribution by human beings to our mother planet.

Green web hosting is a new craze and some big web hosting companies are going to switch to it. It is a good idea that internet industry is gradually moving to become greener than any other industry. There are some companies still, reluctant to join the movement.

Green Web Hosting is one of the few companies that claim to be 100% green. The employees of the company take measures such as telecommute to reduce carbon emission caused by transportation. In the same vein, there are other companies adopting policies like to avoid the use of papers completely so that the number of trees fell for meeting the needs of the paper industry are reduced.

Going one step further from not cutting trees, few companies actually come up with a nice and unique idea of committing to plant a new tree for each new customer that they sign up. Likewise, there are some companies that actually offer financial discounts by the means of special packages to the customers who are working for environmental causes with their websites.

Some people are not sure about the effectiveness of a green web hosting platform. They question about how far they can perform and can be relied upon. It has been scientifically proved that renewable energy is as effective and reliable, like conventional electricity or even more. The proof for this is the increasing number of web hosting companies that are going green day by day. The output of these companies is not anywhere behind the less-green peers of theirs.

Green web hosting is not approved by all, especially the customers of the companies which adopt this policy. One reason they loathe is because the services are expensive. Companies will bear the expenses in the initial stages. After that the customers will have to take the share of the mission green. Green living demands a lot of money and it is not so easy in this world where people go for short cuts even at the cost of the environment. It is very easy to appreciate a novel idea; but it will take a good deal of effort to embrace it.

Nonetheless, the good thing is that companies that are willing to take up that little extra cost in exchange of having a role in saving their planet and as is the law of business if these organizations can somehow sense some moneymaking/saving opportunity by going green that'll definitely get them going.

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