Black day for Google

On Saturday, 29 March 2008 Google blacked out the Google homepage as a gesture to raise awareness to a worldwide energy conservation effort earth hour.(why?)



Global cities participated in Earth Hour at 8pm on March 29. Earth Hour is the highlight of a major campaign to encourage businesses, communities and individuals to take the simple steps needed to cut their emissions on an ongoing basis. It is about simple changes that will collectively make a difference – from businesses turning off their lights when their offices are empty, to households turning off appliances rather than leaving them on standby.

Chennai and several other large indian metros participated,terming it the national Batti Bandh campaign.The Chennai event was organized by sify tech.,WWF & Earth hour.(If you happened to miss the event,there is a similar campaign planned for May 1 called Vilakku Anaiyungal organized by Exnora International.)

Ironically though, the black screen could actually be taking up more energy than the original white one. A study by techlogg comparing Google’s regular white homepage to black power saving search site blackle, shows that black screens actually hike up the amounts of energy required. Well, at least they tried.:)

Quote from the Google site-

"As to why we don't do this permanently - it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display. However, you can do something to reduce the energy consumption of your home PC by joining the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.