Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees

A photo of a green tree

I try to use Google products rarely and this includes when searching the web. Over the years, I have jumped between a few alternatives; DuckDuckGo, Bing, and now Ecosia.

The real jump away from Google was when DuckDuckGo became a viable alternative that vowed to not track your activities around the web in order to make money. They offered something different, new and… better. It opened my eyes to trying new search engine experiences.

A group photo of 18 smiling and happy people - employees at the company Ecosia - the front three of whom are holding a framed Ecosia company logo.

Ecosia, based out of Germany, are relatively new kids on the block. Their unique selling-point is that they promise to use the majority of the money they make to plant trees around the world.

Each month, in the hope of being open and transparent, Ecosia publish their financial reports so you can see exactly how much money they have made and where they spend it. If the reports are to believed, then they give around 80% of their profits to charitable and non-profit organisations around the world that plant trees.

The search results are based on Bing, so some data is transferred between Microsoft and Ecosia – but they respect the “Do Not Track” option in your browser, if you can work out how to activate that.

Using something other than Google isn’t for everyone. People seem to trust Google so much that they have an aversion to the alternatives. From what I have seen so far, Ecosia has a good, honest intention and I encourage you to give them a try.

https://ecosia.org

Which search engine you use and why? Let me know in the comments.


5 responses to “Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees”

  1. Steve The Pet Peeve avatar
    Steve The Pet Peeve

    Hey read this while doing my daily stretches before I head off to the local laundromat to reprogram their dryers to add a “hey Google” function so when you’re drying your toesocks the wizkids over at silicon valley can figure out why the heck you need to wash them this often and which AI can better serve you ads for foot fungus cream. Anyway, I love trees too, 420 blaze it amiright? Hopefully these nerds can plant some real green if u know what I mean instead of invasive species which crowd the countryside and cause my hay fever to go absolutely bonkers!!!!!
    Space cadet Stevie over and out!!!!
    Sent from my Google pixel.

    1. coxy avatar
      coxy

      Thanks for the input, Steve. Insightful, as ever.

  2. […] get stuck wtih two options; comply or cease operating. Not sure whether search alternatives like Ecosia are complying […]

  3. […] Ecosia legit? (Our Changing Climate on YouTube) — Since I’ve mentioned the tree-planting search engine Ecosia before, I was interested in this video researching how your searches plant […]

  4. […] Ecosia, the search engine that promises to plant trees around the globe, is putting 100% of it’s profits from this Thursday towards planting native, subtropical trees in the Byron Bay area of Australia. […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.