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Blackle: Does a Black Screen mean a Greener Google?
In a bid to attract the environmentally aware web user, Google have launched a new search engine called Blackle. The search engine was inspired by an article written by Mark Ontkush on the blog ecolron, this January.Ontkush claimed that if Google adopted a black screen in the place of its crisp, white background, a total of approximately 750 Megawatt-hours could be saved per year.
Unfortunately for the world’s fossil fuels and the eco-friendly web user, Ontkush calculated this saving from the older CRT monitors, rather than calculating an estimate from the more modern and energy efficient LCD screen.
It is believed that nearly three quarters of all monitors, which are used all around the world, are LCD (liquid crystal displays) screens.
It is true that a black screen can result in energy savings of about 5% to 20%, when used on a CRT screen. However, tests done by Cadmus have shown that a bright (coloured) screen makes no tangible difference in energy consumption to a dark (black) screen, when a used on a LCD monitor.
David Korn, principal at the energy and environment advice specialist group, Cadmus has said that although these colour changes produce negligible energy savings, tweaking the brightness, contrast and settings has a substantial effect on energy consumption.
On closer inspection, the energy saving potential of Blackle.com seems to be limited. The emergence of such a search engine today seems nothing more than a noble gesture, whereas had it been established five years ago, when CRT screens were still predominately used, it may have had a genuine effect on decreasing the world’s energy consumption.
Google News posted on 27 July 2007
