Ecosia Blog

> an unknown percentage Do like one or two google searches and you'll see a monthly transparency report. (https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree-planting-receipt… Spend another five minutes doing research and it feels like Ecosia goes above and beyond to make their purpose pretty legitimized. E.g. the company is a certified b-corporation. The founders donated their ownership of the company back to the share. (https://blog.ecosia.org/trees-not-profits/) Sure, google has done a great job building the ecosystem. But Ecosia doesn't appear to deserve the skepticism I see here in the comments.

And a nice blog [1] too! [1]: https://blog.ecosia.org

Ecosia and Qwant have just started collaborating on EUSP (European Search Perspective)[1] This could easily yield very interesting (i.e. "not just another bing proxy") results once it starts gaining traction. I use DuckDuckGo at the moment, only because Startpage started making themselves impossible to use when they started aggressively blocking access via VPNs. As other people have already said,see `noai.duckduckgo.com` and `lite.duckduckgo.com` which might address your specific concerns. If you are a Mullvad user, there is also Mullvad Leta[2], which has been security audited[3]. I might shift more towards Ecosia/Qwant. [1] https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp-germany-rollout/ [2] https://mullvad.net/en/blog/introducing-mullvad-leta-a-search-engine-u… [3] https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/16/security-audit-of-our-letamullva…

Meanwhile in Europe: Qwant and Ecosia team up to build their own search index: https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/

It's a noble effort, but they're so late to the game that it's hard to see them making a significant dent. I hope I'm wrong. They were: > aiming to serve 30% of French search queries [by end of 2025] https://blog.ecosia.org/launching-our-european-search-index/

Search is already being worked on with Ecosia and Qwant having created their own European search solution https://blog.ecosia.org/launching-our-european-search-index/

Brave Search has an independept index (https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/28/brave-search-doesnt-use-bings-index-… and Qwant and Ecosia recently announced that they would be working on an independent European search index too (https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/)

Ecosia is just Bing and Google though [1], so basically American and not German. It looks like they're planning to build a European index with Qwant [2], but their help pages still say they're on Bing and Google so I guess nothing materialized yet. [1]: https://ecosia.helpscoutdocs.com/article/579-search-results-providers [2]: https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/

Yup, their financial reports are completely public and transparent. As a non-profit you could also access that data through other means https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree-planting-receipt…

It seems they are also diversifying their investments into other climate impact projects like solar (see some of the projects here: https://blog.ecosia.org/climate-projects/).

It seems they kind of do this already. [1] "We send out payments to different partners each month to plant and protect trees in biodiversity hotspots across the globe." [1] https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree-planting-receipt…

This blog post briefly explains their legal setup: https://blog.ecosia.org/trees-not-profits/ They don't just have intentions, they have legal requirements. It's fine to be cynical, but if we just assume that everything is always terrible, there is no incentive to not be terrible.

There is no good alternative right now. Even eu-based ones use google's or bing's search indexes, essentially being a different frontend for google and bing, so imo it does not make much difference. Kagi sort of does sth similar, but much better imo, which is also why I use them. There is a common initiative by ecosia and qwant to build their own index [0], which is hopeful though, and something to look forward to. [0] https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/

That's really not trivial. But Europe is trying: https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/

It’s a very open company. They don’t look like greenwashing at all. It’s their mission, since the start. Why do you think it’s not possible to plant 168M trees? They have partners all over to physically plant tress. https://blog.ecosia.org/tag/where-does-ecosia-plant-trees/

Does anybody know if/how Ecosia tackles long-term viability of their trees? Edit: From their site: "Of course, not all trees survive; that never happens. Ecosia therefore only counts trees that will survive for more than three years – a time when they’re robust enough to face most natural threats. For instance, if we plant 1000 trees and know from experience that the mortality rate in this area is 25%, we’ll only add 750 trees to our tree counter. We continually measure the survival rate of the trees we plant, through inventories and satellite technology, and adjust our tree counter accordingly." (https://blog.ecosia.org/how-do-ecosia-trees-survive-cut-down/)

As an alternative I've been using Ecosia, it seems to donate 80% or more of its profits to planting trees where they are needed most (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosia) Also considered Privacy friendly: https://blog.ecosia.org/tag/privacy/

Ecosia's open letter to the EU commission: https://blog.ecosia.org/eu-open-letter-google/

Ecosia (https://www.ecosia.org/) is a search engine based in Germany which spends most of its profits in reforestation efforts by collaborating with local non-profit organizations. They also publish their monthly financial reports here: https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree-planting-receipt… Disclaimer: Not related to them in any way but recently came to know about them when they hit the 100 million count of trees planted.

https://blog.ecosia.org/content/images/2019/06/Financial-Report-May19_… From their infographic, you can see that Ecosia donates 51.6% of its income to planting trees, the rest going to employee incomes, reserves, and "spreading the word". You can save yourself the extra step and simply donate to the foundations that Ecosia donates money to: edenprojects.org hommesetterro.com greenbeltmovement.org itpa.org.br

ecosia financial reports: https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree-planting-receipt…

I linked this a different comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ld0EDDQZg4& This is our tree planting officer explaining (among other things) how he tries to make sure we plant in the right places (and that includes land ownership questions and how to make sure the tress will still be around in a few years). As for energy consumption, we do offset the CO2 emissions that are associated with searching on Ecosia by running our own solar power plant. Here is some more information on this on our blog: https://blog.ecosia.org/co2-neutral-seach-engine-ecosia-solar-plant/

For whatever reason the last two transparency reports were only published in their blog. This is the most recent one: https://blog.ecosia.org/december-ecosia-financial-report/

Hi guys. [Shameless plug warning] We at Ecosia (www.ecosia.org) help build this thing. You can help as well by using our search engine and other products. If you have any questions I can probably answer them or ask my team for details. Here you can find some pictures from the planting process: http://blog.ecosia.org/post/109214958355/new-project-more-trees-ecosia… I could also provide some more if there's interest.

Sure. https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/

The index: https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/

There have been a couple attempts to do this previously. In India, there was one version used as a physical barrier on a customs line for 450 miles. Also happened to improve the area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Customs_Line#Great_Hedge https://amocarroll.com/projects/tracing-the-great-salt-hedge China has the China's Three-North Shelterbelt Program where they're trying to hold back the desert in North China and Inner Mongollia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Three-North_Shelter_Forest_… Based on reports, it has issues with tree survival, yet seems to be making progress based on aerial surveys. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259033221930274X There's also an attempt in Africa in the Sahara that a bunch of countries signed on to. Unfortunately, their commitments have mostly amounted to talk without much funding or governmental support. Seen a few videos of locals who seems to believe in the idea, its just not getting much large scale help. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(Africa) I also use Ecosia (https://www.ecosia.org/) as a web browser, and they supposedly plant trees based on number of searches and a percent diversion of search revenue. Seems to at least have some photographic evidence of money actually being spent somewhere. Senegal's an example with desert work. Seems to have evidence that at least some amount of trees are being planted with videos (harder to…

Regarding Startpage: https://www.startpage.com/privacy-please/startpage-articles/startpage-… https://web.archive.org/web/20210729190016/https://support.startpage.c… The original link is dead for some reason: https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/12… TL;DR: Startpage appears owned by an ad company? https://web.archive.org/web/https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/new… Could someone explain to me how an ad company and a privacy company work together? Seems like opposing interests? Maybe Ecosia will be a good alternative later on: https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/ Another suggestion would be https://searx.space/