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I can't believe the folks over at digg.com gave this article over 3800 diggs! It makes me wonder what all these techies REALLY know about tech!

The fact of the matter is that while changing from black to white may save some energy on CRT displays, it might actually cause LCD displays to use slightly more energy. The article claims that about 25% of the monitors in use are CRTs, which may or may not be true. Assuming it is though, that means that a change to black would save 25% of the machines some power and could actually cost more for 75% of the machines!!

LCD displays use a constant back lighting to provide light to the panel. When a LCD monitor shows pure black, that's actually the point at which the monitor is working the hardest, closing all of those little doors to block the light from coming through. I'm sure that some tests could be done to show this, even if the power to keep all the little doors closed was minimal the best case scenario is that Google changing to a black background would have ZERO effect on the 75% of the world that uses LCD displays and might actually cost a little MORE energy for them.