Save the worlds rainforests a search at a time with Ecosia. (via blankbullet.com- link deprecated)
update: Lee in comments to this post said Ecosia is a scam(see update 3). I’ve had a look at this (see article here and here). It seems Ecosia is a for profit organisation but looks quite legitimate and worthwhile to use. It is always worth checking these things out however, and there are plenty of other search engines out there which do much the same thing. eg. Ecosearch, Goodsearch, to name just two which we could all look at and utilise.
update 2: Read the comments to this post before you do anything else! There are plenty of big questions surrounding Ecosia once you start to look at them and as to whether its the sort of business you would want to support. Look carefully into these environmental search engines and if in doubt don’t use them. The best advice may be to make a donation to a good charity instead. WWF.
update 3: Christian the founder of Ecosia has posted a comment below and also a reference from the WWF has been found. This all taken together means that using Ecosia to do your online searching will make a contribution and seems to be totally legitimate.
Ecosia is a scam. It belongs to a German guy who owns Forestle, Znout and many others.
He claims to give 90% of the money on Forestle and 80% on Ecosia. Then he calls Ecosia the greenest search engine? He is the one who claims on one of his sites to donate more than Ecosia does. He has different websites all saying absurd things. A complete fraud.
Lee thanks for the comment I’ve updated the post to address them. Its always worthwhile checking deeper into claims made by any organisation, although I think you are much too dismissive overall.
The comment from Lee was a bit strong but it does make sense, After reading this I looked into it and there is something strange about this network of “save the planet” websites from this German guy.
Forestle was kicked out of Google for fraud. Look it up on the internet. They still use similar practices to what got them out of Google like using text that works as an incentive to click artificially on adds so they can make more money. The CTR rate (percentage of clicks in adds) they base themselves on is absolutely ficticious. Only 2% of people click on adds? A regular search engine has CTR’s closer to 10% (paid adds are the top results so they get a good CTR). A website like Ecosia that incentivates people to click on adds should have an even bigger CTR. I don’t tell people to click on adds on my webpage and my CTR is at about 6%. If I can get 6% being honest I can only imagine Ecosia’s CTR… They must a lot more money per search than they claim.
For a website that is looking to help the planet they also use loads of energy consuming marketing videos,
Ecosia claims that no personal data is used but show statistics of accesses to the website on their statistics area. The separation by country means they log the IP’s of users who access the website and actually process that data.
Their relationship to the Copenhagen conference is also misleading. Ecosia has never had anything to do with Copenhagen.
A lot of what is used by those guys on their websites does not add up. Google has already banned their “save the forest” part of the business from using their platform. If Google banned them, they must be sure that they are not really donating 80 or 90% of the money as they claim.
I can understand the reason for writing the article. A lot of newspapers picked up the story. If you look at it it was a paid press release that was distributed to news agencies and journalists. Most news services just copied the press release. It was an easy way to write an interesting article. The problem with this is that this is one of many websites from the same guy all saying they are just donating money. Donating money seems to be a good business as they are growing fast and being able to afford really expensive websites and marketing material.
Thumbs up to you guys for making me look deeper into Ecosia, Forestle & company.
James, Thanks for your comment, it was informative and you digged a little deeper than I did the first time. It looks like Lee may be right so thanks to him too.
Its always important to know….to really know where you send your money, or who you support or what companies you use. Especially when you want your actions to be for a greater good you need to be especially careful.
I found your site when I was doing some research on this company. I also found a article on the wwf site. They seem to be supporting the search company.
http://www.wwf.org.uk/wwf_articles.cfm?unewsid=3888
However as this is a new company they many not yet know how much will be donated, yet it appears there is a partnership. It will be interesting to see if we ever find out how much is actually donated that is verifiable. It’s a shame that intelligent consumers are so leery of this type of site, yet we must be if we are going to make a difference.
Come on, seriously? The company is endorsed by the WWF and prints the receipts to their donations online. They’re completely legit. If they weren’t giving this money directly to the cause of rainforest preservation, the rainforest preservation agency would be the first people to decry it. Calling this a scam is ridiculous. And saying you really have to be careful about what company to trust if you’re going to be doing good in the world is just as silly – as if you’re really hard pressed for where exactly to make the most philanthropic mouse click you can. Stop discouraging people from doing something good.
James said: ‘Ecosia claims that no personal data is used but show statistics of accesses to the website on their statistics area. The separation by country means they log the IP’s of users who access the website and actually process that data’.
What: & Google et.al. DON’T gather personal data?
Most websites are full of ‘click-on’ ads & annoying pop-ups; even most ‘freeware’ sites are fronts for non-free products that require registration & personal data before you can download a limited/trial version. Even most Linux sites seem to carry ads for Microsoft!
Have you never heard of ‘stopscript’ or ‘adblock’? If you use Firefox, take a look at the add-ons: there are plenty of useful & free apps on there.
You cannot MAKE anyone click on your ads, nor do you HAVE TO click on anyone else’s.
DO YOU KNOW HOW TO SPELL ‘N-A-I-V-E’?
There’s a lot of speculation in the critical perspectives here. It seems like some people are just not prepared to believe that other people might do things that are not completely self-interested.
Making promotional videos is hardly evidence that a group isn’t serious about its environmental commitment. The logical extension of that argument is that anyone who consumes resources isn’t really an environmentalist–guess you have to be dead to be sincere. If you actually look up the forestle story, the alleged ethical violations have nothing to do with the company failing to make its promised donations. Google apparently believed that people were doing searches and clicking on ads just so that forestle could get the revenue, and therefore contribute it to their cause.
Critical is good, knee-jerk criticism less so.
What’s the harm in using the site? Just for basic searches i mean.
Does anyone have a sound objection to using this site over google or yahoo?
Albert,
This is an interesting question you have posed. If you are actually using the site for search instead of google anyway even a small amount of good you do is better than using an alternative that doesn’t make a donation right?
This post an thread have created a large amount of heat and the facts underlying it are not totally clear to me even after much attempted online checking.
If you want to make your online life a little ‘greener’ maybe using ecosia would help. Bottom line is you have to make your own call and if you do want to help try Ecosia but do something more substantial too.
Hi All,
Ecosia has seen a mayor update a few days ago. I think you should review the information we provide on the new site. Ecosia is definitly no scam.
Best,
Christian (Ecosia Founder)
Hey Christian
You make an interesting point but still it’s strange that this page is the first one you get when searching ecosia scam on ecosia don’t you think?
No one here gives any sources on their claims and that makes me suspicious.
With regret, but also with hope,
Joep
Well I have been skeptical myself however the wwf links to them, and does say they are helping, and I don’t think they would have them linked to their site if they weren’t.
see: http://wwf.panda.org/how_you_can_help/campaign/ecosia_search/
which I got to from doing a search on the site. Even if it’s not 80% they are doing something so I’m now using them.
@Christian,
Thanks for updating your information on the ecosia website it is much clearer.
@Shari,
Thanks for the link to the WWF page which cites ecosia.
Both these two things taken together make me (again!) revise my position somewhat. Ecosia looks like a good site to actively use. It’s for profit status I think, is totally fair and legitamate model for this sort of operation. I think I’ll add an update to the main post again also.
I had heard of Ecosia when listening to a fabulous presentation on the future of ‘Economic development’ on the TED website. I cannot remember the speaker’s name at this moment, but the subject matter was essentially Green Growth vs. No growth (economically). If you haven’t, go to TED.com; you won’t regret it!
I forwarded a link to Ecosia’s site to a good portion of my personal contacts. As for the issues re: Google’s banning etc. all I see that as is Google looking after it’s own interests…Why WOULD they support competition with such forward thinking such as Ecosia’s? Food for thought….