Blackle: The Energy-saving Search Engine

How can a search engine possibly save energy? That was the first thing that came to mind when I encountered Blackle, maybe short for Black Google, which claims to provide energy-saving search. With its rather funny name which made me chuckle (pun intended), I was a little skeptical about the site's claim. Blackle is basically Google Search rendered in black, instead of the usual white. There lies Blackle's advantage, or so it claims.

Apparently, a black webpage uses only 59 watts to display while a white webpage uses about 74 watts. This is similar to saving a laptop's battery by turning down the monitor's brightness. The 15 watts difference may not seem much at first glance. But a blogger proposed that if Google search, which receives over 2.5 billion queries a day, is displayed in black, this can translate to a global energy savings of 8.3 megawatt-hours a day or over 3,000 megawatt-hours a year.

Come to think of it, it does make sense. With billions of computers accessing Google Search daily, the small amount of wattage (15 watts) that can be saved if Google is displayed in black can easily add up to reach the megawatt levels. This also works for me personally since I don't have a problem with websites rendered in black (including this blog..hehe)

I tested Blackle to see if there would be any significant difference in the search engine results compared to regular Google Search. Thankfully, there wasn't any drastic difference- except for the absence of sponsored links, which is actually great. I think I may be using this search engine from now on. Maybe even in this small and insignificant way, I can actually help in the efforts to save energy. :-)

Visit Blackle - http://www.blackle.com