Black is the new Green...

Sarah

Black is the new Green...

"…If Google had a black screen, taking in account the huge number of page views, according to calculations, 750 mega watts/hour per year would be saved."


In response Google created a black version of its search engine, called Blackle <http://www.blackle.com/> , with the exact same functions as the white version, but obviously with lower energy consumption:

www.blackle.com

Anonymous

WOW! it may save my eyes, and it looks smart too!... as far as I can see.
Thanks Sarah

ozge

It is very confusing... The professions like architecture is becoming more and more, colorful shiny... no need to talk about web designs with flash... Technology makes us more capable design limitless. But we should to deny them all now to save energy...

N

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but unless you are using a CRT screen (not the newer LCD versions) Blackle may actually cause you to use more energy than the regular display:

if Google went all-black, it could save 750 megawatt-hours a year (a megawatt-hour is one million watt-hours; you can convert these to each other and other energy units here). But as ecoIron noted, the savings are most likely to accrue from older CRT (cathode-ray tube) monitors, rather than the more-modern, more-compact, more-energy-efficient LCD (liquid crystal display) screens that have come to dominate the market (representing three quarters of all monitors world-wide as of last year, by some estimates).

On LCD displays, color may confer no benefit at all. In response to my inquiry, Steve Ryan, program manager for Energy Star’s power-management program, asked consulting firm Cadmus Group to run a quick test by loading Blackle, Google and the Web site of the New York Times (which is, like Google, mostly white on-screen) on two monitors — one CRT, one LCD — and connecting a power meter to both. “We found that the color on screen mattered very little to the energy color consumption of the LCD monitor,” said David Korn, principal at Cadmus, which specializes in energy and environment, and does work for the government. The changes were so slight as to be within the margin of error for the power meter. Tweaking brightness and contrast and settings had a bigger effect. The bulkier CRT screen did see savings with Blackle of between 5% and 20%. Mr. Korn emphasized that this was a quick test, not a rigorous study.

You can see that this isn't a disclaimer but I think it's worth knowing more about things like Blackle before jumping on the bandwagon.

You can read more here:

http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/does-a-darkened-google-really-save-electricity-104/