I"m just as cautionary on scams, probably a lot more so, than most everyone else, but I"m not buying your analysis for a minute. Perhaps it does need to be looked into as to whether or not it's as effective on LCD screens, that may be a valid point, I won't pretend to know about that. What I do know is that the official number is actually upwards of 563,883.897 watt hours saved, and that only increases the longer you're on it, as it will show if you go back to the main multiple times! It may still be less than 1% of all US-consumed energy, but that's a highly unfair standard to judge by. You can't expect an energy-saving web search to make up for hundreds of cities full of lights and heating/AC units running all night, that's not the issue. The only way to make the claim that it isn't enough energy saved to bother with is if there were specific raw data available for how much the internet domain ALONE expends, which many would estimate at around 5% of that original figure. Also, that link you first provided said nothing in regards to Heap Media being owned by Australian subsidiaries out to ferociously tear Google a new one, that was just something you inferred from some other source that I wouldn't doubt is questionable. The other aspect here than neither of you have mentioned is that Google runs its millions of search phrases a day through very wasteful mega-servers that they, by corporate quasi-monopoly, have been able to mount on top of the regular routing paths others are confined to. These servers take up more than considerable unnecessary energy, and though Blackle is able to use the same custom search, bypasses those. It's because of this that I'm inclined to say that no, Google won't still benefit financially from the Blackle hits, though I'd agree that needs to be investigated better. But what do you expect Wall Street and Google itself to say?! If this was a scam, it'd be much more prominent, but now it's very obvious they're trying to sweep this under the rug. We're never given as much choice as we think we've got in this society, so if there's a choice that (even if it is somehow in bed with the one it claims to go against) promotes independent solutions and is less wasteful (even if by ooohhh so slim margin as you claim), why would you not go with that and hope that it broadens out into better options down the road by our widening of the demand?!