The Greenness of Blackle

I was introduced to Blackle today. I had never heard of it before (which made me feel a little bit clueless), but it’s a search engine that apparently saves energy because the screen is almost entirely black. And black pixel screens need less energy to load than white pixel screens. EcoIron even posted a blog last year on how this ‘Black Google’ would save 750 megawatt-hours a year.

Although it is powered by Google Custom Search, it is not owned by Google. So it doesn’t have a lot of Google’s features – like the ‘in cache’ or ‘similar pages’ options. Also, a random Blackle search doesn’t find as much links as a Google search normally would. Still, I think it’s a good effort to making the world a little more environmentally conscious and wasting a little less. So I guess that Blackle is actually really Green. 🙂

For those interested, there’s also a Wikipedia entry on Blackle and a Dutch Blackle version.