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 doesn't just produce enough solar energy to power all searches with renewables — it produces more than twice as much. That way, every search crowds out fossil fuels from the grid.
Since Ecosia uses its profits to plant trees, however, every search with Ecosia actually removes about 0.5 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.
Learn more:
- Google’s private jet and private airport
- Google’s renewable energy policy
- Ecosia’s solar energy
- UN Environment: What’s the cost of your search?
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.
Learn more:
- 7 Corporate Giants Accused of Evading Billions in Taxes
- How Google Saved $3.6 Billion Taxes From Paper 'Dutch Sandwich'
- Google pays €47m in tax in Ireland on €22bn sales revenue
- Google ducks $1.27bn bill for back taxes in France
- Amazon Will Pay a Whopping $0 in Federal Taxes on $11.2 Billion Profits
- Ecosia’s financial reports
3. Neutral results
Google keeps track of your click-behavior, 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 to choose whether to personalise your search results or not. Switching personalisation off is easy: just head to your settings.
Learn more:
- MIT researchers found that the more accurately a recommendation engine pegs your interests, the faster it traps you in an information bubble:
- TED talk about filter bubbles
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.
Learn more:
- France fines Google $57 million for European privacy rule breach
- Forbes: How Much Does Google Really Know About You? A lot.
- Ecosia’s privacy policy
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.
Learn more:
