Arrington is all huffed about the irony of Google Israel going black today in honour of earth hour because apparently the black screen uses more power than the white screen. However, the point of Google Israel's blackout is clearly to raise awareness of the event so that any 'extra' power used by the black screen will be more than made up for by the thousands of Israelis turning off their lights...at least in theory. Israeli earthhour is today (March 27th) while the rest of the world will shut off the lights on March 29th.

Google Israel is sporting an all black theme today, in support of Earth Hour’s efforts to raise awareness around energy conservation. From the page telling confused Israeli’s what’s going on:

Google users in Israel will notice today that we “turned the lights out” on the Google.co.il homepage as a gesture to raise awareness of a worldwide energy conservation effort called Earth Hour.

On Thursday, March 27, 2008, Earth Hour invites people in Israel to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm.

Given our company’s commitment to environmental awareness and energy efficiency, we strongly support the Earth Hour campaign, and have darkened our homepage today to help spread awareness of what we hope will be a highly successful global event.

Google has a long history of caring about all things green.

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.

Update: Earth Hour in San Francsico (and everywhere else except Israel) is March 29 at 8 pm. It’s important that everyone turn off their lights then. We’ll need that extra power if Google goes black here in the U.S., too.

Source: techcrunch.com