Conscious Query- A Chrome Extension

🌱 Track Your Searches & Their Environmental Impact

The increasing amounts of AI integration within our day to day lives it makes it harder to see the environmental impact of our searches. ConscienceQuery is a Chrome extension that monitors your search activity on Google, tracking the number of queries made with or without AI. This data is converted into a summary which shows the total enviromental cost for your searches.

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🚀 Features

✅ Search Tracking - Monitors Google search queries and Gemini interactions.
✅ Environmental Impact Metrics - Calculates the estimated CO₂ emissions generated from search activities.
✅ Background Monitoring - Runs in the background and logs data persistently.

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📂 File Structure

📦 ConscienceQuery
┣ 📜 manifest.json      # Chrome Extension Manifest (Permissions & Scripts)
┣ 📜 background.js      # Tracks search queries & tab activity
┣ 📜 contentScript.js   # Observes changes in Google
┣ 📜 popup.html         # UI for displaying data
┣ 📜 popup.css          # Styling for popup.html
┣ 📜 README.md          # Documentation
┣ 📦 images             # Icons
┣-- 📜 icon_16.png      # Extension icon small
┣-- 📜 icon_32.png      # Extension icon medium
┣-- 📜 icon_128.png     # Extension icon large

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🔧 Installation

1️⃣ Download the Source Code
Clone this repository or download the ZIP file.

2️⃣ Enable Developer Mode in Chrome

• Open Chrome and go to chrome://extensions/
• Enable Developer Mode (top-right corner).

3️⃣ Load the Extension

• Click "Load Unpacked"
• Select the folder where you saved the extension files.

4️⃣ Start Tracking!

• Open Google and start searching!
• The extension will count searches and estimate environmental effects.

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🌍 Environmental Impact Calculation

• Each Google search consumes energy, mainly due to data center operations. However, the difference in emmissions with every AI overview is night and day.
• The estimated CO₂ emissions per search is based on studies. A normal google search is esitmated to be 0.2g CO₂ per query. However with the AI Overview that number jumps up to 4.3g CO₂ per query an almost 20x increase.
• Over time, it tracks your carbon footprint from searches.

Sources

The carbon footprint of Chat-GPT

What is the environmental impact of AI

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🛡️ Permissions

The extension requires the following permissions:

Permission	Reason
storage	To store search count data.
tabs	To detect active tabs and URL changes.
host_permissions	To access Google Search and ChatGPT pages.

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📜 License

This project is open-source under the MIT License.

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