Posted on Tuesday 24th of July 2007 at 13:58 in The Internet

Blackle - the evil environmentally friendly search engine

I received an email recently pointing me towards a search engine called Blackle which posed as a Google partner that has the environment in mind. The closer I looked at it I realised this was a cunningly evil scheme.

Blackle was introduced to me as a world-saver. The email stated:

"When your screen is white, be it an empty word page, or the Google page, your computer consumes 74 watts, and when its black it consumes only 59 watts.

Mark Ontkush wrote an article about the energy saving that would be achieved if Google had a black screen, taking in account the huge number of page views, according to his calculations, 750 mega watts/hour per year would be saved."

So by using Blackle you would be saving the environment?
Surely this got plenty of attention but as myself and a few collegues looked a little closer, we realised it was not only evil but also very clever at the same time.



How is this evil?!?
Let's look at this shall we. If this was an official Google thing it would be at www.google.com/blackle so it's not official. Blackle is simply an install of one of Google's webmaster tools that it opens up to anyone with a website; you can rebrand it (black in this instance) and then people can search your site and the wider Internet.

While this is all okay I pondered - the entire world is being fed propaganda supporting climate change so most people feel compelled to try and help in some way. For the most lazy of us, changing the colour of the Google page we visit is a small step that the email explained could have massive cumulative consequences.

So it's just *someone* running this?
Indeed. Google powers the search engine in the same way they would for your personal site yet if you click on one of the sponsored links then the owner of Blackle gets some money (as per when someone clicks on your Adsense).

Therein lies the evil genius part
It's perfect! It preys on two massive factors: the inherant laziness of the average Google user and the pressure imposed by the media to save the environment. This means potentially thousands of people bookmarked this site as their new search engine. This means Blackle could get thousands upon thousands of repeat visitors (and searches) and all the sponsored listing clicks that you could wish for. The cash could indeed start accumulating awfully quickly.

So I'm not saying "don't use Blackle" because if what it claims is true then it's a good thing. But it's not an official Google site and your clicking could financially benefit the owner. Also bare in mind that the statistics it uses to support it's argument might not be accurate. Either way, I absolutely love the evil-ness behind Blackle (deliberate or otherwise) because of how it preys on two strong desires. Kudos to the owner. Kudos.

 

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