Check this out:
According to my friend who sent this link to me…
“When your screen is white – either an empty word page, or a Google page, your computer consumes 74 watts, and when it’s black it consumes only 59 watts.
Mark Ontkush wrote an article about the energy saving that would be achieved if Google had a black screen, taking in account the huge number of page views, according to his calculations, 750 mega watts/hour per year would be saved.
In a response to this article Google created a black version of its search engine, called Blackle, with the exact same functions as the white version, but with a lower energy consumption, check it out.
It’s better for the world people!!”
Here is the Mark Ontkush article:
http://ecoiron.blogspot.com/2007/01/black-google-would-save-3000-megawatts.html
Nice!
:-)
UPDATE (27-July): Turns out to be a bit of a scam. Go read the comments. Anyway, “green” is so yesterday. Today privacy is the new black. :-)
This argument is irrelevant for an LCD screen. So I propose that on geek oriented sites make the pages take up at least a 1280 pixel wide format. This way crusty geeks will be encouraged to upgrade to LCD screens in order to fully enjoy there web browsing experience. For non-geek sites you could justify a darker design.
But then again, make them brighter. Encourage people to consume allot of power. This has a benefit that as soon as we actually have a tangible energy crisis (like nationwide blackouts) we may be able to trigger a technology boost like is typical during war times. It took 6 years given a cold war with Russia to get to the moon. Without such powerful motivation to drive such development it could of taken much longer… The renewable energy race is on!
I’ll all for green initiatives but not at the cost of people’s eyesight and accessibility.
Heavy usage of this site (and other sites with light text on dark) could lead to eye strain (the readibility of the search results is awful) – possibly to a trip to the optomestrist – leading to prescription glasses – leading to fueling the mining industry – followed by factory production of glasses (probably using coal-fueld plants) and then air miles to ship the glasses to NZ…
I know, this may sound silly or extremist, but my point is that the renewable energy race is complex and will only truly make sense when we can measure the onflow effects of initiatives. For example, according to BRANZ did you know that buying a heatpump is actually INCREASING the demand for electricity in NZ? Why? Because people who used to heat their homes (and water) with wood burners are switching to heatpumps. And what’s more, many of these people have to supplement the heatpumps with the woodburner because the heatpumps don’t heat as well – so now they’re burning more wood and more electricity!
Update (which I kinda reinforces my previous post): If you read the comments on http://ecoiron.blogspot.com/2007/01/black-google-would-save-3000-megawatts.html many people are saying:
“It will actually require MORE energy to display a black page on a LCD monitor. Liquid crystals BLOCK light from the lamp if a current is applied to them…”
Go figure – going green isn’t as simple as you might think.
I’m no conspiracy theorist, but i once heard someone suggest that this whole global warming/energy conservation buzz is simply a deceptive ploy to control supply and create scarcity, ala Blood Diamond. If so, the irony in seeing Greenpeace street volunteers possibly campaigning for the very ‘powers’ they surely detest is not lost on me.
Hmmm. No. Blackle is not Google’s. The registrant is wrong, the registrar is wrong and it says “Google Custom Search”.
It’s just someone trying to cash in Google AdSense by looking “green”.
Buried.
Found this through sphere…
Just to note, Google did not make Blackle. Some company named Heap Media based out of Australia did.
And they made it in direct response to Mark Ontkush’s article, as stated on their Aboute page, http://www.blackle.com/about
Just FYI
I hope we win the World Cup before we run out of power, we won’t be able to watch the game without it…..