[oliwarner]

First, do you suppose it's running at full pelt 24/7? If suggest the specs are that high to speed to batch operations. Most of the time it'll be idling.

And second, letting Google or Apple manage this doesn't mean it doesn't use energy. They're offsetting or generating? So am I.

[matthiasb]

An idle server still consumes energy. Energy consumption increases with CPU load, RAM consumes the same regardless of the usage.

When Google manages your pictures, they don't have idle servers for each users. This is the main reason their service is more sustainable.