Topic: Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year

[sam]

As noted, an all white web page uses about 74 watts to display, while an all black page uses only 59 watts. I thought I would do a little math and see what could be saved by moving a high volume site to the black format.

Take at look at Google, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let's assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode, the shift to a black background will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. That turns into a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year. Now take into account that about 25 percent of the monitors in the world are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that's $75,000, a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes.

http://ecoiron.blogspot.com/2007/01/black-google-would-save-3000-megawatts.html

http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2007/07/google_turns_to_the_dark_side.html

and you can try out blackle here: http://www.blackle.com/

not sure I beleive this entirely... http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/does-a-darkened-google-really-save-electricity-104/ .. and hell it is hard to read.. I'd rather not get eye strain!

[Simon]

Oh, you'll probably find now that some political correctness loony will have it banned. 

[Reno]

The only problem with that is google has their background white for a reason. It creates a psychological effect in its users when they visit the site. The right site layout with a simile feel and light colors correlates to a happy surfing experience. Where as dark colors equates to a depressing surfing experience. Thats why people tend not to paint the insides of their homes in dark colors. Its depressing to most. As far as google, a multi-billion dollar company, is concerned 75,000 is a drop in the bucket when it comes to making it's customers happy.

[Clive]

I'm with Bob.  Screw you Sam.   White is good.   

[sam]

sounds like the white supremacist is coming out of Clive again... 

... oh and I'm with you - I find it to darn hard to read!