The tech giant Google has significantly strengthened its environmental policy regarding water usage, taking on the ambitious commitment to return more liquid to the environment by 2030 than its global computing facilities consume. Currently, 165 conservation programs are being implemented under the corporation's auspices across 97 river basins. It is expected that by the set deadline, these measures will compensate for 19 billion gallons of water annually, which more than doubles the company's total needs recorded in 2024, leaving room for scaling. This move is designed to alleviate tensions in regions where locals are justifiably concerned about water shortages due to proximity to data centers: after all, one standard facility of this format consumes about 300,000 gallons daily, which is equivalent to the needs of a whole thousand families in the US.

To fund the new environmental initiatives, the IT giant has allocated $17 million. These funds will go toward rehabilitating wetlands in the wildlife management zones of the Flint River in Georgia, subsidizing Iowa farmers to convert 5,000 acres of land to perennial pastures, forming a kilometer-long protective corridor along the Zumbro River in Minnesota, and reviving 98 acres of wetland areas near the Blue River in Missouri. Separate programs will affect Nebraska and Texas, while in Michigan, the focus will be on planting native flora to filter stormwater runoff and take preventive measures against floods. In parallel, Google is directing a massive $500 million toward the global upgrade of municipal networks, sewage systems, and closed-loop water supply technologies.

Corporation representatives emphasized that all its data centers in the US collectively spend only about 1% of the volume of liquid that Americans annually pour on irrigating their own lawns, despite the fact that some public figures continue to call neural network products excessively wasteful. Nevertheless, the developers have firmly fixed a course toward a widespread transition to air cooling in locations with vulnerable water resources, as well as the active implementation of recycling, including the use of purified sewage. Notably, back in February, the company announced the construction of new computing complexes in Texas, where an "advanced air cooling system" will be used to radically reduce the liquid consumption needed to maintain the uninterrupted operation of search results, the YouTube video platform, Drive cloud storage, Gmail, and the ever-expanding arsenal of AI tools.