thoughts on Ecosia.
What do you think about Ecosia? I have a habit of using Ecosia as the default search engine. And I do this because a while ago I was looking for a private and ethical alternative to Google.
In my view, Ecosia is a very ethical organization committed to its mission of acquiring money to finance natural restoration projects. I admit that I haven't looked into it in depth so far, but they have a habit of releasing transparency reports.
The problem, if you can call it that, is that Ecosia isn't very private, since it sends data to Bing to make it work. However, I think there's good reason to trust the Ecosia organization even with this. After all, in their marketing, they're concerned about creating a private search engine, or at least collecting only minimal data. So maybe it's not so private now, but and in the future?
They have already shown themselves to be committed to their mission and that is why I trust them.
bruce965
in reply to Nuvalon • • •I do have an opinion about Ecosia, but it's just based on feelings, so it doesn't even make sense to share it. Apologies for not answering your question.
Instead I would like to focus on this point:
Also DuckDuckGo does this, but they aggregate and anonymize that data before forwarding it to Bing. That's probably the best they can do without building their own first-party infrastructure. I would imagine Ecosia does the same.
ghost_laptop
in reply to bruce965 • • •bruce965
in reply to ghost_laptop • • •ghost_laptop
in reply to bruce965 • • •lsjw96kxs
in reply to Nuvalon • • •kinkles
in reply to Nuvalon • • •HeiligerBimBam
in reply to Nuvalon • • •I've been using it for about a year. I'm not sure if privacy is really a big problem. It might depend on your search phrase. I don't think Bing/MS can identify you that easily when searching with Ecosia.
It works well for me most of the time, though. I barely need to use Google.
Things will really get exciting once they have their own index.
tyler
in reply to Nuvalon • • •heavyboots
in reply to tyler • • •tyler
in reply to heavyboots • • •I mean, running a search engine is one of the most expensive things you can do, so the fact it’s so cheap is honestly astounding.
Did you actually use many of the features? Like pinning certain websites, blocking or deranking others, setting up shortcuts like !w, etc? Also kagi has provably private searches, so you can make web searches without anyone retaining a log of what you’re doing, which no other search provider can do, much less tries to do.
heavyboots
in reply to tyler • • •So no, I don't use a lot of those features. But having to go to $10/mo for unlimited searches is laughable pricing, IMHO. Even $5 for 300 searches is ridiculous. That's basically a week of searches?
I respect the idea of it, but my feeling is that they will never grow the business past a very niche offering if that is how they're going to price it. And I say that as a very privacy oriented person.
tyler
in reply to heavyboots • • •You should try measuring your searches. I also thought I used a ton of searches, as a software dev I search a lot. When I first switched I was sure I was going to be using several thousand searches a month. I was barely using more than 300. With Google it was at 800-900.
Probably depends on the person.
(des)mosthenes
in reply to Nuvalon • • •GitHub - searxng/searxng: SearXNG is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from various search services and databases. Users are neither tracked nor profiled.
GitHubeldavi
in reply to (des)mosthenes • • •Appoxo
in reply to eldavi • • •inari
in reply to Appoxo • • •eldavi
in reply to Appoxo • • •themurphy
in reply to Nuvalon • • •Ecosia is better than using big tech directly, that's for sure. But ofc it's not private.
The money for the trees comes from something, but at least it's used for something nice.
To care more about the environment than privacy is a fair choice.
Astrius
in reply to Nuvalon • • •glibg
in reply to Nuvalon • • •tb_
in reply to Nuvalon • • •I use Ecosia nearly exclusively.
I don't like it as much as DDG; which has a somewhat better privacy focus, more widgets, and better support for "bangs".
But the bangs I really care about are still there, it's European and working on a European search index along with Quant, and the trees are pretty cool too.
As is it still relies on either Bing or Google for the results, but oh well. So does basically every alternative search engine, and I'd rather go through Ecosia than directly through those two.
Zerush
in reply to Nuvalon • • •There is also an Metasearch engine which, like Ecosia, create search revenues to support several charity projects (Environment, Education, Medical Support), Max-Impact (FOSS)
llarryyllarryy.github.io/Max-I…
Search. Find. Donate. – Your Search Engina for a good Deed
llarryyllarryy.github.ioNuvalon
in reply to Zerush • • •