What is ECOSIA?
Make Ecosia your new search engine and plant trees with your searches - for free! Ecosia is a search engine based in Berlin, Germany, that donates 80% or more of its profits to non-profit organizations that focus on reforestation. It considers itself a social business, is CO2-negative and claims to support full financial transparency and protect the privacy of its users. Since Ecosia uses its profits to plant trees, however, every search with Ecosia actually removes about 1 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere. This means that, if Ecosia were as big as Google, it could absorb 15% of all global CO2 emissions. The trees Ecosia is planting also have many other environmental benefits.
Does Google use ECOSIA?
Ecosia does return relevant results – check. But, Ecosia uses the Yahoo! and Bing algorithms, which many believe are not as developed as the Google algorithms. ... On both search engines, the interface is attractive and easy to use, but Google offers more options to help find alternative results. How ethical is Ecosia? The Green Stars rating looks at various social and environmental factors to award an ethical score. I'm awarding Ecosia a score of 5/5 Green Stars for social and environmental impact based on the following: Ecosia uses 80% of revenue (after operational costs) to fund tree-planting operations.
Why Should You Use ECOSIA?
This means that, if Ecosia were as big as Google, it could absorb 15% of all global CO2 emissions. The trees Ecosia is planting also have many other environmental benefits. They prevent erosion, create microclimates that protect crops, restore depleted soil and create habitats for endangered animals.
Ecosia vs. Google: Which is the best search engine?
Ecosia is a free alternative to Google. Here are five reasons why you should start using Ecosia today.
1. Environment: Despite Google's management team owning a fleet of jets, the company has used carbon-neutral servers since 2017. Ecosia also runs on 100% renewable energy and is building new solar plants as its user base grows. Since Ecosia uses its profits to plant trees, however, every search with Ecosia actually removes about 1 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere. This means that, if Ecosia were as big as Google, it could absorb 15% of all global CO2 emissions. The trees Ecosia is planting also have many other environmental benefits. They prevent erosion, create microclimates that protect crops, restore depleted soil and create habitats for endangered animals.
2. Taxes: The ingenuity of Google's products pales in comparison to their legal acrobatics. By routing their multi-billion profits through a series of low-tax states, Google has consistently avoided paying their fair share of taxes. Other tech giants such as Amazon and Facebook also use their offshore scaffoldings to pay but a fraction of what other businesses contribute. Ecosia, meanwhile, pays its taxes, and always will. These taxes fund schools, nature conservation and foreign aid, as well as much of the infrastructure businesses like Google, rely on.
3. Neutral results: Google keeps track of your click-behaviour, search history and location in order to guess which search results you'd like to see. This personalisation can result in a "filter bubble": a state of intellectual isolation caused by being deprived of information that challenges your current opinions. With Ecosia, you can choose whether to personalise your search results or not. Switching personalisation off is easy
4. Privacy: Google shares data across many different services, including embedded services in millions of third-party websites. Ecosia, in contrast, is one of the most privacy-friendly alternative search engines. Concretely, this means that Ecosia doesn't create personal profiles of you based on your search history, but actually anonymizes all searches within a spam protection period of 4 days. Moreover, Ecosia encrypts all searches to protect them from eavesdroppers, doesn't use any external tracking tools, and doesn't sell your data to advertisers.
5. Purpose: Most companies are here to make as much money as possible for their founders and shareholders. Ecosia, in contrast, is a purpose-driven, financially transparent company, here to regenerate our planet by planting trees where they are most needed, without compromising on its ethical standards. Ecosia's CEO, Christian Kroll, even made a legally binding commitment to ensure Ecosia's profits stay within the company and will eventually either be invested or used for tree planting
Watching the numbers on the ‘how many trees have been planted’ counter within the search bar and on the Ecosia app going up every moment is incredibly satisfying. Ecosia has a dream to plant one billion trees by 2020 and this seems less ambitious than first believed, although any ambitions to knock Google off its perch are likely unfounded.
Having said all of that, if you’re looking for a way to boost your environmental credentials this Earth Day, why not download the app and give Ecosia a try? It’s easy to use, functional, and each time you search you’ll get the feeling of having contributed to something wonderful.
