Google's white webpage 'not green'

Google could save about $75,000 per year by not having predominantly white web pages

Google is famous for offering one of the most uncluttered user experiences on the internet, but the search giant's website has come under fire for not being environmentally friendly.

Environmental awareness site TreeHugger blasted Google's predominantly white web page because it uses more electricity to display on a CRT monitor.

A CRT monitor apparently uses about 74 watts to display an all-white web page, but only 59 watts to display an all-black page.

About 25 per cent of monitors currently in use worldwide are CRTs, particularly in emerging markets.

Google gets about 200 million queries every day, and Treehugger estimates that each query is displayed for about 10 seconds or the equivalent of about 550,000 hours.

At 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, Google could save about $75,000 per year, Treehugger claims.

However, the environmental site does not appear to swallow its own advice, as it has a fair amount of white space on its own website.