Eco Search Ecosia | Saving the forest

I doubt that I'll ever start instructing people to start ecosiing things, but if I am in the mood to surf Ecosia is a great way to do it. The concept behind Ecosia is great. I am a bit tired of filling the Google coffers (the Ecosia promo is quick to remind how much money is made in on-line clicks), but the privacy policy makes up for it - they pledge to delete all personally held data within 24 hours. So if I wanted to shop sustainably on-line I can use a non-profit solution to find what I'm looking for; not only reducing my own footprint but contributing towards the saving of land from future deforestation through their partnership with the WWF.

The science
The science/business behind Ecosia I shant comment on as you can see it for yourself here. They don't have a facility to actually off-set your carbon footprint, but they do reduce it through their solar powered data centre. One thing is for sure - they do have what seems an outrageously high positive impact (9.7 million square meters at the time of writing). My contribution to that so far is measly, but I will be enjoying it grow.

I have also reviewed the benefits of loyalty rewards with SmileCity. With a mind towards only shopping with the partners who were sustainable; I found the NZ market just wasn't sufficiently big for it to be effective. Ecosia has a more collective approach to the problem, and this is apt given that the issue is a global problem, so if I can reach the right companies by using a good search tool, and save a few trees on the way, why wouldn't I?

What's the Catch???

With any new technology/idea that has taken off very fast there are a few draw-backs. I jumped on tonight to clock up some square miles. I had a list of recommendations received over a few summer BBQs and my first search brought back a tagged page error that looked vaguely familiar from my webmaster days and wrestling with MySQL. Perhaps the site is busy though, as the trees being saved as I watch is growing rapidly. Ten minutes later it was working again and I was happily finding my way to the information I was looking for.

As for the quality of the search. It is good but not great. I am a big fan of Google, and I really hope that I can get a Google android phone with an Ecosia compatible browser one day. I'm not sure how open to the idea Google Labs will be. The partnership between Ecosia and Yahoo!/Bing is it's biggest strength and its biggest draw back for a user like myself, it brings a seriousness to the table that so far outweighs any reduced quality of search results, although I do like the previewed results Ecosia gives.

Conclusion

I now use Internet Explorer with my Eocsia tree count in the status bar for the majority of my searching. I simply can't bring myself to shift from Google Chrome for my usual internet work (social networking, YouTube, blogs, news etc). Ecosia has all of the right ingreenients for a strong rival search solution. Even if it only takes 5% of the global market (about what % of a population actually vote for the environment ticket during elections), the difference that will be made in the forests of South America will be a big part of the ground swell of sustainable adjustment the global economy is predicting. With two on-line giants like Microsoft and Yahoo! (Ecosia's partners) leveraging their significant muscle on this initiative I can see that these companies at least are seeing this as a path for their own sustainability - economically, socially, environmentally.