Is Blackle the new Google?
Thanks to several Representah’s for the heads up – we’ve been hearing about BLACKLE for a couple of days now – the so-called “eco-friendly version of Google” – we finally got the time to check it out and research it a bit – the email that’s circulating explains Blackle as the following:
For those worried with energy consumption and all its downsides… When your screen is white, being it an empty word page, or the Google page, your computer consumes 74 watts, and when its black it consumes only 59 watts. So
a man named Mark Ontkush wrote an article about the energy saving that would be achieved if Google had a black screen, taking in account the huge number of page views, according to his calculations, 750 mega watts/hour per year
would be saved. In a response to this article Google created a black version of its search engine, called Blackle, with the exact same functions as the white version, but with a lower energy consumption, check it out.
Numerous blogs around the world are debating the theory – like Treehugger where several commentators argue that the theory is questionable:
Somebody didn’t think too hard about this one.
Most everybody these days are using LCD screens instead of the big clunky CRT monitors. The backlight design of an LCD means that it’s actually using no energy to display a white pixel, and a small voltage is applied to each of three sub-pixels to display a black pixel. Might have been a good idea ten years ago, but not anymore.
Wikipedia cuts to the chase:
“Blackle is a search engine developed by Heap Media Australia [1], which is energy-saving. It uses the Google search engine, from which the company derives its income.”
Mhhmmm smells like a scam to us. Thoughts?
For those wanting to use the real Black Google – Google has a black version they have developed: http://google-black.blogspot.com/
