Save the earth, use Blackle

[The Straight Story]

How is Blackle saving energy?

Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy. Blackle searches are powered by Google Custom Search.

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. "Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen." Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.

http://www.blackle.com/

Damn, now I am going to feel guilty every time I go to white background web site...kind of like posting here. DU, it is the evil :)

[Oregone]

1. How is Blackle using energy?

Just about every time you make a single search, you use enough energy to boil a pot of water

But Blackle is fortunately using Google Adsense to also gain revenue while you feel better about your screen.

Im not denying that darkening the screen is energy saving. Im just saying, it may be pissing in the wind.

[Salviati]

2. Except that it's totallly not true if you're using a LCD monitor.

The backlight is going to be powered anyway, and the default screen IS white - it actually will likely save energy to use the white background.

http://techlogg.com/?p=918

But it's much, much more effective to just turn down the backlight a bit.

[PeaceNikki]

3. Debunked

http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201400248