Google saves energy with Blackle

In January 2007 Mark Ontkush published an article on his blog claiming a white web page uses 74 watts to display, while an all black page uses only 59 watts. He did some calculations and worked out that if Google was black it would save a massive 750 Megawatt-hours a year.

In response, Google launched a new version of it's interface called Blackle which really is a Google Custom search. It looks nice but the contrast needs increasing because grey text on black is hard to read.

Tip: If you need to use the au engine then you can append ".au" to blackle's results page. Unfortunately, it looks like an opportunist has bought blackle.com.au.

If purple was an energy saving colour then it would probably be called purplele.

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