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Black Google Would Save 3,000 Megawatts a Year

ecoiron.blogspot.com — An all white web page uses about 74 watts to display, while an all black page uses only 59 watts. See what happens when you do the math on Google's home page. Astounding.

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  • drethedog, on 10/12/2007, -16/+136That's pretty cool if is true.....
    • jivinjerd, on 10/12/2007, -511/+59Ha! I beat you to it.

      Suckiest Website Ever: http://diggrules24.blogspot.com/
    • Gir53457, on 10/12/2007, -11/+114Block the asshats, do not follow their links.
    • CraigJ, on 10/12/2007, -16/+105@jivinjerd - ***** spammer. blocked.
      @stupidppl - you too asshat
    • Gir53457, on 10/12/2007, -5/+47Block them and speak no more of them.
    • treyd, on 10/12/2007, -4/+89jivinjerd was playing a joke on the spammer, not spamming himself.
    • blahtastic, on 10/12/2007, -5/+47jivinjerd's comment was a joke...suckiest website ever? Humor anyone? Besides he's a member almost a year, so not a spammer. Unless there's another good reason for the hate... ^^^see treyd's...I got beat cause I checked jerd's profile and comments to make sure first, lol.
    • JEdwardFuck, on 10/12/2007, -12/+339Buried as innaccurate. Only CRT displays use more energy to display brighter things. For everything else, it is completely false that a black display uses less energy than a white page. The backlight on an LCD is on for the entire LCD regardless of what is being shown. The black pixels are only black because the LCD blocks out light. Same with projectors, etc. The article is thoughtful, but invalid.
    • drlog, on 10/12/2007, -11/+26@*****

      Right on! That was exactly what I thought the second I read it :)
    • muka3d, on 10/12/2007, -43/+2Why do these spammers exist? What are they gaining?
      Who in the world would click on their links?
    • KibibyteBrain, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11I usually set my browser and terminal windows up so the background color scheme is black anyway...easier on the eyes. Why do we light up our screens like that anyway, is it really that cool that computer documents look like they are on an old school sheet of paper?
    • jivinjerd, on 10/12/2007, -21/+46I am not an engineer or anything, but my basic knowledge of LCDs is that white is produced by an electrical signal activating the red, green, and blue pixels. Black is produced by not sending any electrical signals. Hence no electicity is needed to activate the latter.

      BTW. I am not a spammer. Just a weak attempt at a joke.

    • Metatron197, on 10/12/2007, -7/+5@muka3d

      stupid people like me
    • JesterJDL, on 10/12/2007, -4/+32http://www.07designs.com/gdark/
      a solution
    • zweben, on 10/12/2007, -10/+63"Buried as innaccurate. Only CRT displays use more energy to display brighter things. For everything else, it is completely false that a black display uses less energy than a white page. The backlight on an LCD is on for the entire LCD regardless of what is being shown. The black pixels are only black because the LCD blocks out light. Same with projectors, etc. The article is thoughtful, but invalid."

      Correct me if i'm wrong, but wouldn't an LCD use slightly *more* power to display black than to display white? To display white, the liquid crystals just have to be at their normal state. To display black, voltage needs to be applied to the pixels. The backlight is on full blast either way, so black would just add to the power draw.
    • drmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -14/+8@*****

      LCD's need to apply a voltage to each pixel block (each red, green and blue sub pixel) to allow light to be transmitted.
      This means that for an LCD to show anything other than black (all sub pixels in the off state) would need more power.

      I’m not sure how much power is dedicated to activating pixels compared to running the backlight but I don’t think it would be negligible.

      so the article is not entirely inaccurate, just the numbers a little off
    • DigitalN, on 10/12/2007, -6/+14or just hit control + option + command and hit 8.

      and to the people saying only on a CRT, why is it on my Macbook I get 30-45 minute more battery when I use this when doing a word document?
    • BESTenemy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+21Exactly, JDedward and drmonkey! As we go towards wider implementation of LCD and similar technologies that rely on masking the light source, we'll actually be using more energy on black. LCD masks used in most displays and projectors are transparent when no electricity is passed through them. Regardless of how small the amount of power is needed to make the mask turn opaque, it still renders the original claim of the article false.

      Plus, if we're so judgemental and concerned - let's first flip the luminance on digg and then see how people like it.

      Worried about electricity? How about I come up with my own cause-event chain!

      People that read white text on black background are more likely to develop vision problems and require glasses, not to mention have the lights on in order to see better. Glasses use glass and plastic. We need electricity and oil byproducts in order to manufacture both. So, we're using energy, burning up valuable resources and producing CO2!

      And a note on the personal side. I use LCD's, not CRT's. Quite often I browse at night and it's dark. The display gives me enough light to illuminate the room, so if I go for a coffee or take a washroom break, I don't even turn on the light. All true, of course, provided I have something bright on my screen. I might even got to google homepage for that very reason. How convenient! I'm not using any additional lights thanks to google! If their homepage was black, the chances are I'd be reaching for a switch while keeping the monitor turned on. Oh the horror!
    • karch, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3No. The subpixels that make up a single LCD pixel are red, blue, or green because of plastic filters. But whether the subpixels are turned on or off depends on the state of the crystal molecules behind it, which only require electricity when its changed (blocking->unblocked or unblocked->blocking).
    • cypher35, on 10/12/2007, -5/+501.21 GigaWatts!!!
    • 1337otter, on 10/12/2007, -4/+31DUDE! if we turn all our lights off all the time and started our stoves with flint it would save electricty! awesome : )
    • computergod, on 10/12/2007, -14/+7My CRT uses the exact same amount of electricity when displaying all black or all white, tested it myself.

      LCD panels use almost no electricity to turn on, you can power them just by touching them.
    • goat2, on 10/12/2007, -23/+7***** google
    • zweben, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11@karch

      "No. The subpixels that make up a single LCD pixel are red, blue, or green because of plastic filters. But whether the subpixels are turned on or off depends on the state of the crystal molecules behind it, which only require electricity when its changed (blocking->unblocked or unblocked->blocking)."

      That's not true at all. Liquid crystal reverts to its default state when voltage stops being applied to it. If what you said were true, we would have reflective low power LCDs that keep their image after the display is powered off. We don't, because that's not how the technology works.
    • zdiggler, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3Actually most LCD use dynamic backlighting lighting stuff. If it have more white on screen the light get bright. If there is less white on screen then backlight goes darker to achive CRT like black levels..

      It also take energy to keep those pixels charged to show white.
    • nixonrichard, on 10/12/2007, -11/+29"1.21 GigaWatts!!!"

      That should be "1.21 JiggaWatts"
    • MrStabby, on 10/12/2007, -18/+8"Black Google would save 3,000 Megawatts a Year"

      ...and Gizoogle creates 3,000 Megawiggers a Year
    • paulwesterberg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Many posts have stated that this would not save energy on lcd displays and this is true for most existing lcd displays, but newer lcds that use dynamic back lighting for enhanced contrast and better display of darker color schemes could also benefit. LCDs like the newly announced Samsung 275T & 245T use less electricity when displaying dark web pages.
      Btw, LCDs use an energy efficient fluorescent back light, how much energy would be saved if all CRTs were replaced with LCDs?
    • Phil246, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5@zweban
      "Correct me if i'm wrong, but wouldn't an LCD use slightly *more* power to display black than to display white? To display white, the liquid crystals just have to be at their normal state. To display black, voltage needs to be applied to the pixels. The backlight is on full blast either way, so black would just add to the power draw."

      Not necessarily. It depends how the crystals are orientated by default.
      If youve ever taken a calculator apart ( hey, i was bored ) and flipped its polarisation filter so that the screen is black by default, the numbers then appear white. It doesnt take any more power to do this then it would if it were displaying black numbers on a white screen.
      It takes energy to flip the crystals, yes but it depends on which way the screen is set up as to which would take more energy.

      besides, the backlight is the main draw of the power, compared to the energy involved in flipping the crystals.
      It might save *some* energy but certainly not 3k megawatts per year. That number is more for the CRT users out there, not the LCD users.
    • halcyon22, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3@nixonrichard there is no jigga prefix; see here: http://www.simetric.co.uk/siprefix.htm
      The original pronunciation for the giga- prefix is 'jigga', not 'gigga', but at some point everyone just assumed that giga- was pronounced with the hard g sound. And yes Back to the Future is one of the best movies of the 80s :D
    • malavalla, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8why does always got to be a black thing,
    • Kazanoe, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1Your all wrong- the best thing to do is to simply rotate the crystals every once in a while.

      Hey, it works on the T.V. shows!
    • tom6a, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Here's another related story:

      An MMORPG Avatar's Eco-Footprint
      http://www.omninerd.com/2006/12/10/news/1049

      The article claims that avatars leave an environmental footprint larger than actual people in developing countries. Pretty crazy.
    • OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -5/+51Black Google stole my bike.
    • lemenhir, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13
      BLACK POWER!


      You dudes are just way too young. Uhuru!
      Dugg down in 3...2...1...
    • tim04, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8or we could just not use our computers and go back to paper. Seriously, if Google and all of its searches were black, it would look like ***** and no one would use it, just like Digg or any other site that's white. So no, $300,000 is not a "a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes" as it's the difference between a multi-billion dollar company and a 12-year-old's Myspace profile.
    • mortcs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you don't like white-space in your web browser use lynx. Then you get black space with most terminals.
    • grumpyrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Correct me if i'm wrong, but wouldn't an LCD use slightly *more* power to display black than to display white? To display white, the liquid crystals just have to be at their normal state. To display black, voltage needs to be applied to the pixels."

      Close. Power is required to switch the state.

      But more to the point, there is a significant difference between the power requirements of a LCD and CRT. If LCDs required 50W, you would have about 10 minutes battery life on a laptop.
    • tybris, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3"I am not an engineer or anything, but my basic knowledge of LCDs is that white is produced by an electrical signal activating the red, green, and blue pixels."
      Then your basic knowledge is false.
    • picardo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Who is the black private dick that's a sexmachine with all the geeks?

      SHAFT?

      No! Black Google.

      Can you digg it? ;-)
    • EBFoxbat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I measured. I show no difference on my 24" LCD TV running at 1366x768. Not even a hicup. So I'm going to not worry about this.

      However, enabling power saving features by default in Vista would most certainly save tons of power.
    • louiemantia, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1http://google.louiemantia.com/
    • schwnj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6So I tried it:

      I have an Acer 24" AL2423 monitor and a KillAWatt P3 Energy meter. I plugged the monitor directly into the meter.

      I opened two tabs in firefox: the original google page, and one of the "Dark google" variants that a bunch of people have linked to (same as original, but black background). I maximized the browser window. and brought up the original google page:

      65 Watts

      I watched it for a minute and it didn't change. I then switched to dark google:

      64 Watts

      Again, this was a stable reading. Switching back and forth between dark and light reliably changed between 64 and 65 watts.
    • ldkronos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I tried it on my 19" samsung SyncMaster 900p (CRT) using a kill-a-watt.
      White: 95w
      Black: 75w
    • shosterman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2www.gizoogle.com

      http://sites.gizoogle.com/index2.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.digg.com%2F
    • steal_apps01, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@ DigitalN

      That shortcut is so cool, i'm using it right now.
    • giabago, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Whether a black screen with white text saves energy is evidently debatable (I believe it's true, but I wish someone would plug various types of monitors into a power meter and run some experiments). However, I find that my eyes fatigue much more slowly when reading white text on a black screen. I use the black Google search page at http://www.jabago.com. It's all Google, but it's black. Hope this helps those who are searching for such a thing (as I was).
  • mbball, on 10/12/2007, -2/+27I would say go goth google, but then I might abandon that site forever because that looks just plain atrocious.
    • shit, on 10/12/2007, -1/+51It will happen when Google starts going through its awkward teenage years.
    • bonyicecream, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I use the "google dark" greasemonkey script for google(it made the digg front page like half a year ago), and it looks pretty damn good...but if they were going to make it look like that, it would probably end up using those 3000MW of power at the server end instead(and probably even more than that)! >_>
    • crysys, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10"I hate you Larry! I wish you weren't my real Dad!" *stomp stomp stomp*
    • zybch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Hang on.
      LCD screens (which are pretty much the standard for new PCs and the last 3 years of older ones use the SAME amount of backlight power to run the cold cathode tubes regardless of whether the contents being displayed are light OR dark in color!!
      In fact theoretically an LCD pixel needs power to switch the liquid crystals into the orientation where light is blocked rather than their passive state where light is allowed through (no power in this state)!
      So, this article may have been true 5 years ago, but these days its completely inaccurate and wrong!

      However, I use greasemonkey for a black google simply because its SO much easier to look at that a horrible glaring white expanse with a few lines of hideously washed out text.
    • neuroelectron2, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3$300,000 a year realy isnt' much in the scheme of things, but changing the background color of google is pretty easy. So is it worth it to bother? yea, why not. If we want to save energy we have to start somewhere. Little things add up.
    • geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1". If we want to save energy we have to start somewhere. Little things add up."

      Energy Saving++
      Usability--

      Seeing as Google is a company based around Usable products, the energy savings is much less impetus to actually make this change.
    • SleeStaK911, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3It could have like, a dripping slime background. Like on Duke Nukem...
    • shit, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6>> "It could have like, a dripping slime background. Like on Duke Nukem..."

      And instead of "I'm Feeling Lucky" it could be "Shake it, Baby".
    • cooldudevamsee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@zybch
      When u consider googles entire user base, only about around 30%-25% ppl have access to LCD screens.
  • TejanoRey, on 10/12/2007, -12/+2good article
  • beatboxmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10People spend way more than 10 seconds on google.. + searching + looking through results pages + adding all those damn ++++ lol..
    • Metatron197, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7at least until it goes down again.... then i wont know what 2+2 is
    • xile, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I spend an average of 1-2 seconds on google, per query. Yes, there are times when I spent up to a minute or so, but usually I just want the first result, which doesn't take long to find.
  • FlyboyP, on 10/12/2007, -6/+88This is only true if every monitor is CRT.

    Inaccurate.
    • Dumbledore, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9I guess so, but the main point is that energy will be saved if google goes black.
    • npsken, on 10/12/2007, -3/+95... and never goes back
    • creacher, on 10/12/2007, -12/+5Thank you, npsken. Brilliant.
    • FlyingAvatar, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5@Dumbledore: Actually, it would stand to reason that an LCD would actually use more power on a black screen than a white one. An LCD has a backlight that is always on, and uses the most power when all the pixels are a full voltage (i.e. black). Granted the difference is likely very small compared with the difference on a CRT

      Their argument my also apply to OLED screens, though likely much less dramatically.

      However, there are other factors that are not considered, such as readability. Would a black screened Google make people take more time reading, negating the lower wattage benefit?
    • Nickoby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1npsken....that had me laughing out loud for several minutes...thank you.
    • npsken, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What can I say? For some reason it was the first thing that came to mind.

      Then I thought of Cleveland's (Family Guy) quote:

      "Hey baby. How would you like to go black and make a difficult decision on weather or not to go back?"
    • goosnargh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I went Burnt Sienna and never went back.
  • MrWhipplemen, on 10/12/2007, -20/+2also black pages kill the eyes
  • Harmless, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Perhaps there is room for some sort of organization that can drive and advertise this sort of energy savings.
  • hpkomic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+28I don't think I could picture a non-white google, it just wouldn't feel right.
  • pathy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Energy well spent, I'd say.
    • Metatron197, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Yeah...we should just save energy by cutting the power to the white house
  • chriskzoo, on 10/12/2007, -13/+5What is Digg doing to save the environment? I know Kevin digs a lot of those global warming article - money where your mouth is Rose!
    • EXreaction, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12Ya, we want theme options on digg!
  • fjf314, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16I would say that black pages are easier on the eyes than white ones are.
    • reddevil3, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Yeah but black pages are mostly used to give off a 'cool' effect. It just wouldn't work for sites like digg, google, Amazon.

      Most of the black pages I see are usually for music artists, artists in general, etc.
  • SystmBetatester, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3makes sense since black is a pixel turned off..... untill we figure out how to make a pure black pixel
    • rnelsonee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You can pretty much do that in CRTs... with an accurate electon gun and a shadow mask, no phosphors under a black pixel will light up.
  • whipnet, on 10/12/2007, -29/+1You can always search Google in sky blue.
    http://ufo.whipnet.org/search.html

    -Sorry, stupidppl made me do it.

    *
  • kcchan1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24We can all save more than 3 gigawatts per day if everyone stops turning on the computer just to visit digg 25 hours a day...
    • foolfromhell, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I turn off my computer every day, but I visit Digg at school every hour
    • regeya, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2But...but...if I don't leave my computer on, how will I impress all my non-Lunix buddies with my hella awesome uptime???

      I turn off my computer when it's not in use, and when I remember to I turn off the power bar the equipment's plugged into.
  • Tourney3p0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+26They could just use the same format as Yahoo. Then no one would ever use any energy at all on Google.
    • RoroCo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Bravo Tourney... Well played. Very well played.
    • mercurysquad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7And even if people use it, there really won't be that much white space left....
  • RoroCo, on 10/12/2007, -7/+0So much racist potential in this story... but I will be good. Instead I will just say that sure the opening screen can pass, but reading light lettering on black backgrounds hurts the eye. For example, www.avsforum.com kicks butt for AV research, but after 30 minutes on it, I am ready to go outside and stare at the sun for a couple hours.
  • chrisjs169, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4For those who use Opera, there's a feature like the Firefox plugin built in....sort of. Click the glasses to the right of the address box, click and hold Author mode, and select high contrast (W/B)

    It doesn't work exactly the sane, but it's similar

    This applies to all sites you visit until you turn it off.
  • kamtsa, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Inaccurate. LCD monitors consume in general the same amount of power regardless of the displayed image. Basically they have a back light that is on all the time and each pixel is a light switch the passes or do not passes that light.
    • mooca, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Indeed, and sharing Douglas Adams's view of Sunday teatimes I've just tested it. On a NEC 1500M LCD I'm getting 26W regardless of screen brightness or monitor settings. I get 3W if I let the monitor power down instead of using a screen saver.
  • zephc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+43 Jiggawatts? Great Scott!
    • Dakusan, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Just for reference, it's spelt gigawatts. i've heard it pronounced "jigga" in videos from the early 80s and before. Though that would kinda ruin the joke...
  • Nick22, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is really interesting, not often do you think of power usage when it comes to web design
  • Rikushix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Who wakes up in the morning and thinks "I wonder how much energy Google would stand to save per year if the colours on their website were inverted..."?

    Well whoever that may be, I commend them for pondering the odd.
  • brooklynboy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0About 20 times the energy would be saved if you only left the lights on in the room you're in.
  • thecheatah, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1I dont think this is true for LCDs

  • sprintmarathon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Think of how much we'd save if we just left our computer unplugged.

    One of the main reasons Google has become as successful as it has is because it has a simple and clean interface. While I realized the this article only advocates changing the colour and not the overall layout or simplicity, but it bares noting that the resulting site looks way less inviting and would ultimately perform far under its potential in terms of user experience.

    I know you science and engineering types like to reduce things down to overly simplified systems where you can quantify things exclusively in numbers, but this is a case where that kind of argument is totally foolish. You could take the same position for saving energy by not investing the effort to bleach paper pulp. At the end of the day, thanks to user preference, you're still going to be wiping your ass with white paper.
  • wilf_brim, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Agreed, buried as inaccurate. Most displays are LCD now. The majority of their energy use if from their cold cathode fluorescent tubes, which use the same amount of energy regardless if background is black or white.
  • alastria, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Who cares about watts? White text on black BGs destroy my retinas. I can't even read HardOCP unless I use Beryl's invert screen color command.
  • pumasalad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1the site where they quote the power stats from appears to be really old (it cites Windows 95, 98 and NT only). I bet the ratings are all for CRT monitors and not flat panels which use power much differently.

    does anyone know what the differences would be for flat panel LCD displays? I remember reading once that the battery in my laptop would last longer if I had brighter colors and less dark colors on the screen, which would imply the exact opposite of this story...
    • subxero37, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2When a color is white on an LCD screen, the cell is set to be completely open, thus letting the backlight's light through -- usually, this requires no electricity (look at an LCD-based calculator; the pixels are completely open/off when the calculator is off.) The more colors you use that are really close to white, the less electricity is used to keep the LCD cells closed, so there may be a small electricity savings, but I wouldn't know how much. Maybe somewhere in the milliwatt range.
    • daofma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Best way to optimize battery life: turn the brightness down.
  • juliocgrajales, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Why can't google just give an option to visitors to click on what color they want the background to be? Problem fixed, no racist jokes, no arguments about energy savings, no need to go outside at all and maybe they could include one with a Puerto Rican Flag in the background, omg waiting for the digg down showers
  • ZaNkY, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3Something to consider: If Google were to change the color scheme to all black, Google would loose AT LEAST 50% of its user base (dare I say 80%?). The "tech Elite" could find work arounds such as using Firefox extensions (Stylish or Greasemonkey), but the vast majority would just switch REGARDLESS of the fact that functionality remained the same.

    All the money Google would be saving people (assuming the accuracy of this article) would be guzzled in the end by Google's competition: Yahoo And Microsoft have lots of white on their search pages.

    Fact is, this entire idea of Google saving energy by switching to "black" would lose GOOGLE money, and not be much better energy wise at then end. Not only will it never happened, but even if it did no good would come of it (for anyone).
  • DrScott, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3It's been done, see hell.com

    http://www.google.com/custom?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&client=pub-4580595255389029&cof=FORID%3A1%3BGL%3A1%3BLBGC%3A000000%3BBGC%3A%23000000%3BT%3A%23666666%3BLC%3A%23ffffff%3BVLC%3A%2380ff00%3BGALT%3A%2380FF00%3BGFNT%3A%23333333%3BGIMP%3A%23333333%3BDIV%3A%23000033%3B&q=digg.com&btnG=Search
    • CatsAreGods, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2...and virtually unreadable.
    • cr3ative, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I know you probably meant to show us this page as an example, but it has your Adsense referral code in, and therefore you are profiting from any ads clicked on that page.

      Buried as spam.
  • antdude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Back in the old days with DOS, etc. we had black background screens. Remember Apple's old OS (e.g., ProDOS, LOGO)? :)
  • Eyeooga, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4is there any research on if it takes any longer for a human to scan through the information on a dark page vs. a light page?
  • MuteMathSSR, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8A black Google? What? It worked in blazing saddles!
  • dknetdill, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2Who cares??
    • RezSav, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1I know right?! No, but this is good news... I would assume
  • imightbewrong, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1great story!
  • gtdawg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I thought this was going to be an article about the power we'd save if Google and all their equipment was shut down, and how much power we'd save. Probably better that they stay online :-).
  • jmhyer51, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"An all white web page uses about 74 watts to display, while an all black page uses only 59 watts"

    Why is this special to Google? This applies to a lot of websites.
  • Pulp, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1People need to stop digging articles without reading them in full. Furthermore, people need to stop posting things without reading them in full.
  • Raian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2LCDs use less energy than your typical light-bulb... If you want to save energy, grab some compact flourescent bulbs from a hardware store or wal mart ... also if you need smaller or larger sized bulbs check out the Ikea in your area.

    Check out this site: http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/energystar/english/consumers/pamphlet.cfm?text=N&printview=N

    And while you're at it try turning down your fridge a notch, and lower your thermostat by a couple degrees.
  • stelt, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2watts a year? that's no good unit, just as km/h/yr is not
    • undersky, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1i can't believe people digg u down. u are completely correct!
    • Misogyny, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Watts per year is no different a measurement than Kilowatt Hours, which is what you're billed by the power company.
    • LKBM, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Misogyny: 'Watts per year is no different a measurement than Kilowatt Hours, which is what you're billed by the power company.'
      Seems like Watts per year is Watts/year whereas Kilowatt Hours are Kilowatts*hour. Are we talking about saving 3000 Megawatt-years per year or 3000 Megawatt-hours per year or what?
    • Misogyny, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2From the article:
      "That turns into a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year."

      Anyway, the article is silly due to the CRT/LCD situation, and the Digg title is silly due to dropping the term "hours", and I'm silly for posting to the article at all...
  • infinity306, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0And unplugging or turning off the monitor causes it to use Zero Watts.... Kind of makes it hard to be productive using the computer though........ LOL
  • superguysteve, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1the man will try to keep it down.

    fight the power.
  • bullrassler, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Buried as inaccurate on several fronts:
    - lcd power is brightness independent.
    - author doesn't know difference between a megawatt (power) and megawatt-hour(energy) OK, the article says mwh but the title doesn't...
    - Black (and gray) text on white is much more readable than white (gray) text on black due to the iris of the eye closing in a brighter environment. This is more of a problem for older eyes and people who have had laser eye reshaping and the like, and it is a genuine problem.

    If text is not as readable, people will take longer to read it, and that is _really_ counterproductive and wasteful. Pretty is fine, but pretty should not get in the way of functional unless you are talking about art.
  • bedouin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1People still use the Google front page? Any respectable browser has a search bar now. I definitely don't want to see a results page with a black background . . .
  • hirschab, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Just because it doesn't apply to LCD's doesn't mean the article is inaccurate, there are plenty of people out there still using CRTs. And I doubt people would jump ship, Google is ingrained and there isn't really much competition in the search engine category. That said, it would look ugly, ugly, ugly.
  • rmxz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Will also prevent cancers.

    On CRT screens it'll reduce the radiation emitted too - since it's when the electron beam is on that radiation is produced.
  • Runawaygerbil, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1..."et tu google"..-earth.

    hahahah.


    • FluffyArmada, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Terrus Google non amat. (sorry... only been learning it for a week)
  • Procode, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Does it really matter? Not like your alone paying the $300,000
  • cJw314, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The headline itself is brilliant; I wonder how they would react...

    (now I'm off to rtfa. ; )
  • arctic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Who gives a *****
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