Barkings! | The Small Dog Apple Blog

Blackle, the Black Google

Posted 2007-08-02 16:10 in by Ed Shepard

by Matt, matt@smalldog.com (written by Matt, posted by Ed)

Here at Small Dog, we strive to help the environment in any way we can. Vermonters from all over dropped off over 55 tons of electronic waste at our South Burlington location at a free recycling event, we use compact fluorescent light bulbs where possible, eat as locally as possible, and generally do all we can to minimize our impact. I read part of a study that showed it takes approximately 74 watts to display an all-white image on a screen, but only 59 watts to display a black screen. With this in mind, they calculated the potential savings if Google changed its background to black. At 200 million hits daily, with an average display time of ten seconds, Google is on screen for over a half million hours every day. If viewed in full screen mode, the potential savings is 15 watts per computer. Do the math, and it works out to 3,000 megawatt hours per year.

This assumes 25% of the monitors in use globally are CRT monitors, the huge and extremely heavy older type of display. If everyone in the world switched to LCD monitors, the thin “flat screens” becoming more pervasive every day, global energy consumption would go down in a huge way.

Aside from the energy savings, I find reading white text on a black background more enjoyable than black on white. Maybe it’s just the novelty factor…

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  1. I prefer using www.Darkoogle.com as their text are green which reduce eye strain. So instead of saving energy from our monitor, it also save our user’s eye energy.


    — Seth    2007-08-04 09:08    #

  2. great tidbit. not to be nasty or anything, but judging from the background color on this here blog, isn’t that like the blogger calling the browser bgcolor=white?


    — sk    2007-08-05 17:25    #

  3. Lovin the green on black.. but you cant access any of your iGoogle account, so i have to go back to google.com for that :o(


    — Fox    2007-08-05 19:36    #

  4. I actually also prefer the darker backgrounds.I am now using this site called Greenback Search, which I think is better than Blackle. The site is powered by Google so search results are the same. What sets it apart from other sites using the same principle is that they donate a big part of their revenue to an environmentalist organization called Carbonfund.org. You’ll find more information on their site http://www.greenbacksearch.com/ along with some other cool features.


    — Krista    2007-08-20 07:53    #

  5. I think http://www.ecoGG.com has the nicest implementation of the energy friendly black design. Its also short to type ;-)


    — Roger K    2007-08-21 05:22    #
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