Blackle, the Black Google

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…