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The concept for going black to save power, even specifically calling out Google, has been around for like 15-20 years already.

blackle.com

http://www.blackle.com/

Does anyone remember http://www.blackle.com/ ?

Reminds me of a few years ago my sister (who is very environmentally conscious) was using Blackle instead of Google in order to save energy (they even advertise the number of watt hours "saved" under the search bar).

She was a bit dejected when I informed her that LCD screens don't use less energy displaying black vs. white, since black is merely produced by blocking the light, and that the only way to save power was to turn the brightness on her laptop down.

Remember when Blackle came out as a joke on the plain white background?

You can also use other search engine proxies, like Blackle or Znout where the data that is stored is not stored on Google servers, and is pruned regularly rather than stored indefinitely.

I wounder how much energy and money this would save for a server hog like Google. Reminds me of Blackle

To be fair, there is always Blackle for all your late night Googling needs. I really wish that everyone would switch to a light-on-dark color scheme as it's easier on the eyes, but I guess that's just not going to happen.

... and by that I mean Blackle.

You insensitive clods!

In other news: Use http://blackle.com/ if you are interested in combining a search with saving power. Sure, it might run the same amount of power from the server end, but at least it's not using as much power to display the results.

http://www.blackle.com/about/

drifting OT here, but just... WOW. I'd not seen that. How sublime.
Throw everything you've ever known about bleed and contrast ratio out the window; Blackle says displaying dark images and backgrounds on your monitors saves energy. Brillant!
(ah; to be fair, they do make the plasma/lcd distinction in their faq.)

Sites like Blackle suggest that a black screen saves energy. May have been true for CRT displays, but modern TFT Displays always have the backlight on, even on a black screen.

Google's homepage to black? Like this? Though I have to wonder if they can really claim all that much in savings - for LCD's is there really a significant power savings for black pixels vs. white? Does anyone know what the difference is?

Well, as you can use your CPU cycles to help research, I guess you can also help by not wasting energy too. Both are common efforts and achieve better results as more people join. If blackle has any numbers that only by changing the background (I have all my windows with dark background anyways, just because I don't get so tired of my eyes at the end of the day), you can help. I think, that as a common effort to achieve different goals, you are free to chose either one, independently on how much it cost to each individual.

So... don't burn coal for power and don't use compact fluorescents. When did two wrongs become a right?

They should do this. ;)

Going green is a big deal. Here's an example I saw about 3 weeks ago...

Stop using Google and start using Blackle.

"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"

(As I post this: 431,996.517 Watt hours saved)

Between displaying 100% white at the highest brightness and the blackest black at the lowest brightness, there is only a 5-10% difference depending on resolution and refresh rates.

You can try blackle to search them.

How can yahoo compete with Blackle... I know, I know, mod me into oblivion.

I believe that would be "excessive use of the color white".

It would appear that we have found the real reason behind Blackle!

I think he meant something like this.