Ecosia, the ecological search engine

Have you ever stopped to count how many times you “went” to Google in a day? Or how many searches did you do in a year? Probably not, but search engines are currently one of the main tools of our daily lives. But did you know that when you do a Google search, Are you contributing to atmospheric pollution? 

Although we have an intangible idea of ​​the internet, the truth is that, for everything to work, there must be servers that are always in operation. CarbonFootPrint estimates that each Google search emits 1g to 10g of CO2 into the atmosphere and, with 5.6 billion searches per day (according to the estimate of Statista), Google is responsible for 40% of internet-related carbon dioxide emissions. This is why Ecosia was created.

EITHER Ecosia is a search engine created in 2009, in Germany, whose main objective is help combat deforestation and climate change, while providing all the information you are looking for. The company generates revenue through search ads, just like Google, and invests 80% of its profit in reforestation projects around the world - at the time of publishing this article, Ecosia has already planted more than 169 million trees in more than 30 countries.

In addition to the environmental aspect, Ecosia is also known for its emphasis on transparency and by concern for user privacy. When it comes to transparency, the company makes a point of publishing monthly reports where it discloses all its financial data, in detail, including how much was invested in planting trees. As regards privacy, the search engine adopts several practices that protect the user, such as not storing searches permanently, not selling information to advertisers, encrypting all searches, etc.