Google Goes Black For Earth Hour
by Mark Ontkush, Boston, Massachusetts, USA on 03.29.08
Google raised energy awareness to the googleth degree today by changing their home page from white to black in support of the earth hour campaign; their brief statement is well worth reading. While the Googlers still don't think a permanent switch saves energy (a common misconception in a surprisingly complicated issue), the awareness is good enough for us; it's 95 percent of the battle. You Rock. :: Google
Way to go GOOGLE! I love it when a big company like this shows their support.
So, worst case is that black backgrounds can save from 0-3W/screen for LCDs. Best case is that energy hogging CRT's will have an 18-88% reduction.
Only argument is really just how much energy dark screens would net out to. And that's a function of how many site's are dark, how much time in displaying all the worlds screens, and what sort of screens are in use.
Saving one Watt is useful. Saving 1,000 MWH's is a real savings. How much coal has to be burned and how much CO2 generated to make that 1,000MWH at your computer screen?
How about Treehugger darkens things up a little bit?
Kudos to them to do (even for just a day) what clearly will not save much, if any, energy. However, what would save plenty of energy is if they turned off their server farms for that hour. But, I suspect board members at Google decided it was easier to eat crow on the black issue than actually have systems go down for an hour.
Regardless -- good for them for making a statement.
ur doin it wrong.
"Knowing is half the battle."
iz right.
Great, lets make Google hard to read and not save any energy in the process to get attention. The results will be negative attention.
Just go to Blackle.com which is google black 24/365..
Or maybe it's a Google promotion by the PR?
Seriously, I don't know any other eco-site that praises a corporation (esp. Google) than any other site.
Many other companies have contributed tons to being green, and they're never highlighted. It's like Google pays to get some spotlight.
Well, I would have rather liked Google to permanently change their home page to black if they really think it is going to have an impact in the energy saving. Or atleast come up with some bg theme which is not pure white which is the most disastrous one.
I can't believe you people. Google went dark to SYMBOLIZE shutting your lights off. It had nothing to do with saving computer screen wattage or computer energy. Sometimes the smartest people have no use of LOGIC!!!
[this is a common misconception, see link. mjo]
I can't believe you people. Google went dark to SYMBOLIZE shutting your lights off. It had nothing to do with saving computer screen wattage or computer energy. Sometimes the smartest people have no use of LOGIC!!!