Why Is Google Black Today? It's Earth Hour 2008

Google has made its home page black today in honor of Earth Hour. What is Earth Hour? It's an annual event to highlight the need to save energy, and consists of people around the world turning their lights out for one hour at 8 p.m. local time.

Google says it is using the black background as a symbolic move to indicate turning lights out, and that a computer monitor uses the same amount of electricity no matter what is showing on the screen. But there is an organization that claims that having a black background uses less electricity than a white background, and it has put up a Google search page called Blackle (www.blackle.com) Some environmentally minded folks encourage people to use Blackle for Web searches instead of Google to save electricity.

Does a black background save electricity? I honestly don't know. But until there's a definitive answer, one can always commemorate Earth Hour 2008 by turning out the lights at 8 p.m. You can learn more about Earth Hour and sign up to say that you'll participate at www.earthhour.org.