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Google Blackout

drtimofey [PersonRank 10]

Saturday, March 29, 2008
16 years ago6,938 views

Today, Google "turned the lights out" for users in United States to pay contributions to Earth Day. So for those of you in US, you will be seeing a dark background on Google.com.

More info:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/earthhour/

Bilal [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Google black today everywhere :

http://www.google.co.uk/
http://www.google.ie
http://www.google.ca/

Ben Allen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

This will get peoples attention.

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I got a 404 error on the "earthhour" page, can someone give me a URL with an IP (datacenter where it works) or a screenshot? Thanks in advance

Stephen Tordoff [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

This should work:

http://72.14.207.99/intl/en_uk/earthhour/

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Thank you Stephen ;)

Kirby Witmer [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Wow! what a surprise. I went to google.com and it was black.. black.. black. :)

Erik Høy [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

Confirmed. Even for Google Denmark, and the explanation is translated into Danish as well, so this seems to be prepared for a long time ago. Check out the screenie of Google.dk in Black:
http://erikhoy.blogspot.com/2008/03/google-slukker-lyset.html

Search-Engines-Web.com [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[moved from "Post 1000: Google Just Went Black for Earth Hour"]

http://www.freezepage.com/1206798778MSQRKEBZEB
http://www.google.com/intl/en/earthhour/

Here it is, archived for eternity with this url.

Use it whenever you are in the mood.

BTW:
It has been wonderful helping this forum get off the ground.
Good Luck – hope you really develop it

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Thanks for your postings Search-Engines-Web, and I hope you're not saying good-bye at your 1000th post :)

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here]Search-Engines-Web : the "Earth hour" event lasts 1 hour in real life, but the Google home page is black for more than 1 hour, that is to say 1 day :)
So "just went back", you might have been late for some hours it hasn't been a problem.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

The Black Google Homepage (Google Operating System)
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/03/black-google-homepage.html

Zim [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I see it from here too! Wow! This is great :D

Haochi [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

http://google.com.ar – Argentina
http://google.com.bo – Bolivia
http://google.com.co – Colombia
http://google.ca – Canada
http://google.dk – Denmark
http://google.co.uk – UK
http://google.com – US

Brinke Guthrie [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Techcrunch:

We criticized Google when we first posted about this because, it turns out, black web pages actually may use more power than white ones (based on a study that Google itself cited last year). So Google is, ironically, causing people who visit their site to use more power to celebrate Earth Hour than they would on a normal day.

Google changed its message to users to note the disparity (compare to what they said to Israeli users two days ago:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/27/google-goes-black-in-support-of-earth-hour/

but I still find this all very funny.

Of course, this begs the question as to whether or not Google should change their site permanently to black to save display power (see blackle). Google looked into it, and said the opposite is true: “displaying black may actually increase energy usage.”

I won’t even bring up the irony that Google, according to the study they cited, is actually increasing energy usage in Israel by having a black home page. The point is, people, they care.

Colin Colehour [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

So will Google do this again on the 29th of this month?

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here]Haochi : http://google.ie is missing

David Hetfield [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here] Colin:
<< So will Google do this again on the 29th of this month? >>

You mean next year?

Colin Colehour [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Yeah, will they continue to do this every year? Will they also do this for San Francisco Light's Out event in October each year? How often will we see Google Turn the lights out?

David Hetfield [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I think that if the organization will keep it's tradition (and i'm pretty sure he is) , i see no reason why Google will stop supporting it.

Mrrix32 [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

It looked "interesting" I wouldn't say better or worse, just different.

Google seems to be "all white" now :-D

Ethan Adviento [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

Interesting this – Google were quick to announce it made little difference to power useage (fact is dark screens use less energy on CRTs if not on more modern flat screens).

But a dark Google as an important symbolic message to us all? Yes.

http://searchgreener.com has been a dark version of Google for sometime – looks like Google copied them today. Dark, for fewer emissions, but also they use ALL money made to buy carbonoffsets to rebalance the searching.

Rather than a one-off 'lights-off' hour, or a day in the dark by Google, why not use searchgreener.com everday as your normal search routine, to use less power but put back something to fight climate change.

searchgreener is a green search engine everyday.

EA

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