Black is the New White

In 2006, former Vice President Al Gore’s compelling documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, was released, spurring an unprecedented interest in environmental awareness. The film documented evidence for Earth's global warming epidemic and exposed the grim consequences that humans will face should they choose to ignore the situation.

Ever since then, it seems we have all become a little obsessed with “going green”. We are bombarded with environmental messages in TV shows and commercials, in the speeches of political candidates, and even on social networking Websites such as Facebook and MySpace.

We get it. We’re supposed to save energy, recycle, and cut down on our greenhouse gases. But if you’re like me, you may still wonder: how can a lowly individual such as myself really make a difference?

Turns out, you can go green by going black.

In January 2007, a blog post titled A Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year on the green computing Website EcoIron proposed a theory that having black version of the popular Google search engine would save quite a bit of energy.

Enter Blackle.

Blackle, a search engine with a completely black background and powered by Google Custom Search, functions essentially identically to its white counterpart. However, Blackle saves energy because its background screen is black. According to the EcoIron blog, a black screen uses only 59 watts to display, while a white screen needs 74.

Google, the most popular search engine on the Web, gets a whopping 200 million queries a day. Assuming every Google user switched to Blackle, this would save 8.3 Megawatt-hours a day, 3000 Megawatt-hours a year, and about $75,000 in yearly saved energy. Blackle has recently been gaining momentum by making cameos in numerous environmental and technology blogs, including Treehugger.com and even The Wall Street Journal online.

So, the next time you search, I urge you to give Blackle a try. Blackle lets you do your part—albeit small—to save the world. In the long run, it could also help save you money (gasp!) by lowering your energy bill. Win-win situation.

Blackle is still relatively new undiscovered in the Internet world. However, Blackle has the possibility to become an Internet phenomenon. Imagine the energy that could be saved if all Websites changed their background to black—it's almost inconceivable.

Since its release in 2007, Blackle claims to have saved 473,025.553 Watts. For now, it trudges along, picking up new users daily and pushing its slogan: "Blackle.com—saving energy one search at a time."