Published by Ecosia on 2024-10-12
Ecosia Overview
What is Ecosia? Ecosia is a search engine that uses its ad revenue to plant trees in biodiversity hotspots around the world. The app is privacy-focused, with SSL-encrypted searches and no tracking or selling of user data. Ecosia is also CO2 positive, removing around 1 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere with each search. The app is transparent, with monthly financial reports and tree-planting receipts published on the website. Ecosia is supported by Safari 12.1 and above and has been praised by The Guardian and Treehugger for its environmental impact.
1. We're interested in trees, not your data: we don’t save your searches, we don’t track the websites you visit, we don’t sell your data to advertisers, and your searches are always SSL-encrypted.
2. Ecosia is a search engine like Google, but very different: we use our ad revenue to plant trees where nature and people need them most.
3. The Ecosia community has already planted millions of trees in Ethiopia, Brazil, Indonesia, Spain, as well as many other biodiversity hotspots.
4. Thanks to our solar plant and the Ecosia forests around the world, each of your searches removes around 1 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere.
5. "Web page contents" - This is required to make it possible to search with Ecosia through the Safari Smartbar.
6. “Browsing history” - A consequence of the first permission but we don’t use it.
7. That’s why we publish our monthly financial reports and tree-planting receipts on our website.
8. We also signed a legal contract that requires us to stay true to our not-for-profit cause, forever.
9. Trust has to be earned.
10. CO2 neutral is not enough.
Download and Install Ecosia - PC
Download for PC - server 1 -->Intel, 64-bit processor, OS X 10.7 or later.
Compactible OS list:Yes. The app is 100 percent (100%) safe to download and Install. Our download links are from safe sources and are frequently virus scanned to protect you
Amazing Idea but...
I first saw this app through multiple adds and didn't download at first, until I saw the reviews. I checked out the website and it seemed pretty legit. I downloaded the app and was happy as can be knowing I was helping the planet. But probably a week into using the app, I started experiencing some trouble with bugs on my computer. Pop ups started appearing more than usual, random apps that were clearly scams downloaded themselves onto my laptop. I didn't know what happened until my dad(who fixes computers for a living) said it was my search engine causing the problem. I haven't downloaded any other programs and my computer is pretty new. I would really like to believe that it was something else I did that caused these problems, this truly does seem like an amazing company that I would love to support. I'm hoping I'm just that extremely rare case and that Ecosia fixes their bugs so they can continue to grow.
Unusable with a VPN
While I love Ecosia's mission, admire that they're a Certified B-Corp, and appreciate that they don't track users, the browser extension is unusable when it comes to anything resembling a convenient let alone frictionless experience if you use a VPN. If you have a VPN, you get a reCAPTCHA challenge every time you try to do a search: 'Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network'. Ain't nobody got time for that. I understand the need to avoid DDoS attacks etc, but this breaks the app. More importantly, this does NOT happen with Duckduckgo. If you fix this, and stop discriminating against the traffic of privacy-conscious users, I will switch to your search engine immediately.
Genius
I love using the internet and helping the envirnment. This is one of the only honest tech companies out there so download it before google tries to squash it. The more searches a search engine gets, the more it improves, so please download it now (you'll also be planting trees).
Great until...
I absolutely LOVE Ecosia. I think the whole concept is brilliant, and it is extremely easy to use. Simply search in your normal safari search bar, and it comes up in Ecosia. Well, until the newest update. I have no clue why the developers decided to do this, but now you can't use Smartbar Search. Which is a big no for me. If I'm going to search something up, I'm going to search for it directly, not have to tap the little Ecosia button in the top corner and THEN search. This new update is horrible. As far as I can tell, there are no benefits to this new system.
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