A Single Google Search Uses as Much Computing as the Apollo Program in 11 Years

With Space being a popular subject, for great reasons – Curiosity, and sadder ones, the death of Neil Armstrong – the first man to set foot on the Moon, Google is contributing with an interesting piece of trivia.

It says that a single Google search, like the ones we do every day, several times a day, and which take fractions of a second to complete, uses as much computing power as the entire Apollo program.

And by the "entire Apollo program," it means the "entire" Apollo program.

The computers aboard the lunar modules and aboard the capsules, plus all the computers NASA had on the ground, the most advanced supercomputers of their day, performed about as many computations in total, for the 11 years that the program ran and for the 17 missions it ran, as it takes to complete a single Google search.

It's hard to think of a better example of how fast computing power grew in the last half a century and it should put in perspective the things we take for granted today.