Google could save the world by going black

AN ECOLOGY site claims that Google could save the world a lot of lecky by changing its web design.

All Google has to do is change its home page from a electricity sucking white colour, to a more eco-friendly black.

According to TreeHugger.com, here, a cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor uses about 74 watts to display an all white web page, but only uses 59 watts to display an all black page.

Said that there are a lot of CRT monitors out there, which means that they waste energy displaying white backgrounds.

If Google, which gets about 200 million queries a day, displays each query for about 10 seconds, it means that it will burn 550,000 hours every day on desktops.

A shift to a black background will save a total of 15 watts. If a quarter of the monitors in the world are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that's about $75,000 a year.

OK this is not much, about the same amount that INQ head office's solar power division will be providing to the national grid, but it is something.

Treehugger says that when it redesigns its site it will dump the white too. µ