Google's "Blackle" (www.blackle.com)
Google has been on the news and in magazines quite frequently during the recent weeks. It has been mostly forgettable news like its soaring stock price, increasing profitability etc. etc. But by good old word of mouth, I came across something I found to be a pleasant surprise from this giant company.
By force of environmental concerns, blackle emerged. An alternative website to access google's powerful search engine. By changing google's typical white background on its webpage (google.com) into black (blackle.com), they claim that they can help save the environment. The idea is to lower the consumption of energy of computers logged on to google. Since google is used worldwide, the tiny savings of a black screen vis-a-vis a white screen amounts to something significant. As of now, blackle, claims to have saved: 347,435.151 Watt hours. Energy savings is theoretically good for the environment.
I think the Philippine government should help encourage similar behavior. Our government policy should translate similar activities in the realm of ICT into real world incentives to keep our creative minds working on solutions that make a real difference even with minimal effort.
Just this morning I read that our government has ordered the DOE and DOF to study how to spend money it earned from the energy sector to bring down the energy price. Perhaps some of that money can be channeled to businesses that are energy efficient with "blackle-like" practices so as to encourage similar behavior from our commercial sector, it being a major consumer of our country's energy.
For google users like me, knowing that pointing our browsers to blackle next time we need to search for something online can actually help the environment is a nice thought. I hope its not just that.
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1 comment:
It's amazing how a small detail like this can make a difference.
But why make up an entirely different site? If the goal of blackle is really to conserve energy, wouldn't they be better off petitioning google to adopt a black background instead of coming up with a website of their own? Perhaps profit is the real goal, and being environmentally-friendly is just their unique selling proposition.
And I'm not sure if it's just me, but come to think of it, most websites I visit adopt a white backdrop. Yahoo is generally white, so is youtube, same with the default settings of facebook, multiply, friendster, even our own blog. Hmm, I wonder why.
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