Blackle: The Energy-Saving Search Engine
July 31, 2007 by Noel
Filed under Green Living
Did you know that you can also save much on energy even when you are searching for information through a search engine? Oh yes, that is really possible. Thanks to Google and it’s energy-saving search engine, Blackle.
According to people from Google, Blackle has been created because of an article which was penned last January on the blog ecolron. This was written by Mark Ontkush and he expressed through this article that if the powerful search engine Google did use a black background instead of the pristine and white one, Netizens would help save around 750 Megawatt-hours of electricity and power for an entire year.
On such a claim, experts did some tests and if these settings were put in on CRT monitors, people would be able to really save on energy and power. However, if such settings were put to the test on LCD monitors, then it was concluded that there were no differences between the black and the white background in terms of energy saving.
[Via directtraffic.org]
[Image from Hilavitkutin.com]
For those that find light text on a black ground difficult to read, there is Greygle. It uses a grey background and dark text that some may find more comfortable to read, while providing some of the energy savings that Blackle would provide on CRT monitors. Also, though currently there is a switch to LCD from CRT, the next generation of monitors, Plasma and OLED, will use more energy to produce white backgrounds over dark ones. So in the future, this may be more of a concern than it is right now.
Wow, that’s so interesting. I never even thought about energy on the computer use. I wonder though how much energy it actually saves? I’ll have to check it out.
Yeah, me too. I was surprised when I first heard about it. Even if it will just save just a couple of watts a month, it is still savings.
I prefer using http://www.Darkoogle.com as their text are green which reduce eye strain. So instead of saving energy from our monitor, it also save our user’s eye energy.
Thanks Angela for the heads up. darkgoogle reminds me of the old monochrome monitors from the 80s.
My first impression was that this was an interesting idea, but it looks like the original energy savings claims do not measure up.
I have been wondering how one could reduce the use of a computer entirely. I know myself that I spend many hours doing research on the Internet weeding through mountains of search engine results. I began to wonder if there was an easy way to streamline the results I get.
My research led me to creating several Google Custom Search Engines using Google’s Topic Driven Search Technology to group results.
Entering an initial search string in the search box and selecting the search button produces a list of topics displayed below the search box. Selecting a topic in my search combines the previous search string with the search string I have placed inside the topic.
It works quite well and reduces the time you spend running searches.
I have three main custom search engines that I have created. The Plasma TV Custom Search makes extensive use of topics.
Plasma TV Custom Search: http//:www.webperc.com
Music Custom Search: http//:www.webperc.com/tab-hut.htm
Google Search: http//:www.webperc.com/google-search.htm
Take a look and let me know what you think.
Ray Szasz
http//:www.webperc.com
I’m using at the moment BLACKOOGLE, which is similar to blackle but offers a lot more functionality like image search, youtube search, mail access, etc. And looks nicer too, give it a try!
US
http://www.blackoogle.us
UK
http://www.blackoogle.co.uk
bye
There are around 25 different versions of “black google” online. The best one I’ve found is http://www.cleanblack.com. Cleanblack is the only version that allows you to change the text colors of the google search results. Try it yourself by going to http://www.cleanblack.com/theme/