Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Blackle - not saving as much as you might think
While many people might consider this old news, I have only learned of Blackle.com today. I received a chain email from a well-meaning colleague about saving energy with the “Black Google”. This sounds good in theory - a black screen doesn’t use as much electricity as a white screen (I probably should link to the research that made this claim but I am feeling a little lazy tonight).
Based on my limited knowledge in this area it would seem that the claims would be true for CRT monitors but not for backlit LCD displays. The backlight is always on but the light is filtered to produce pixels of different colour. Therefore as more and more people use LCD monitors the savings from using a black background are also reduced. Again I am too lazy to link to the research showing that only 25% of people are now using CRTs (seems a little low to me any way).
Another thing that comes to mind regarding Blackle.com is that it is not a google page as was claimed in the email I received today. It is operated by Heap Media group in Australia. I would assume that they are earning revenue from the google searches performed from their blackle search page. Perhaps that is the real motive behind promoting a black background for searches.
“You can’t coach that”
