I can’t believe I’ve only just been made aware of Ecosia. This is a search engine founded way back in 2009 which just goes to show how much news and information is out there that I can never have heard of it until now despite working in the sustainability field. It is a collaboration with Microsoft and can be added through an extension to Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge and others. It began using Yahoo results but now uses Bing.
In 2018, Ecosia committed to becoming privacy-friendly by encrypting and not storing data permanently. Nor is data sold to third-party advertisers. The company says it does not create personal profiles based on search history or use external tracking tools like Google Analytics.
Revenues are split but of the revenue that goes to Ecosia, 80% is used to plant trees. The company has a ticker on its website https://www.ecosia.org/?c=en which as I write is ticking past 177,116,000 trees planted. That is impact! A funky feature is that it tracks how many trees you have planted through your own searches. I’m using now, you can too.
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.