TECHNOLOGY A search engine that save the rainforest

Ecosia.org - a search engine that saves the rainforest


Technology
Fergus Kelly

Ecosia is an eco-friendly search engine backed by Yahoo, Bing and the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). It works like any other search engine but, unlike others, Ecosia gives at least 80% of its advertising revenue to a rainforest protection program run by the WWF. Ecosia users can save about two square meters of rainforest with every search – without paying anything. They've raised €65,000 so far which saved over 100 million square metres. As a carbon-offsetting bonus, even their servers are green – they're powered by Greenpeace Energy, which comes from from one hundred percent renewable sources.
Yahoo and Bing provide search results and sponsored links to generate advertising revenue. Sponsored links are the short, relevant text ads which appear above and beside the normal search results in most search engines. Companies pay for each click on their sponsored link and every click on these ads generates a few cents of revenue for Ecosia.
Ecosia claim that around two percent of searches lead to a click on a sponsored link. They've calculated that they earn about 0.13 cents per search, which can save about two square meters of rainforest.
They donate to a rainforest protection program run by the WWF.
The current project is in Juruena National Park in the Amazon region of Brazil.
So, is it any good?
Well, yes and no. If you're a fan of Bing or Yahoo search it's great. If, like me, you're more of a Google fan, it's not brilliant. But that's not the point. Google search results are easily found in a drop-down menu in Ecosia's interface.
The point of this search engine is two-fold: it keeps awareness of deforestation and climate change high on agendas and it raises money to protect the Brazilian rainforest. The only real issue is the clicking of sponsored links to actually make money for the site - not something I often do.
There's also a nifty FireFox add-on which keeps a running total of the land area you've personally saved plus the total for all users.
I'd happily recommend it - you can switch to Google with one click if it hasn't found what you're looking for. Give it a try and save some trees!