Sustainable Service Review: Ecosia
As I’ve mentioned in this blog post, one of my goals for the year is to incorporate sustainability into other aspects of my life. I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with my sustainable fashion routine and hope to establish eco-conscious practices in my other habits as well.
One of the easiest changes that I came across was Ecosia.
About Ecosia:
Ecosia is a search engine that uses its ad revenue to plant trees in regions that need it the most.
They’re completely transparent about their projects, run on 100% renewable energy, and take user privacy seriously.
There are plenty of other articles that delve into Ecosia’s legitimacy and operations (I like this one) so for brevity’s sake, today’s blog post will simply cover an anecdotal review of my experiences.
Why Ecosia?
The main reason a user would swap their default search engine for Ecosia would be to see greater social impact. Ecosia gives you the opportunity to effortlessly do good in the world and “empowers you to turn an everyday activity into a force for social change”. When you choose to use Ecosia instead of a different search engine, it gives you the ability to align your dollars with your values in an industry that we often have very little control over.
User Experience
Installation:
Ecosia makes the installation process a breeze. You simply set Ecosia as the default search engine on whichever web browser you use and whenever you enter a search term, any ad revenue that is generated counts towards planting trees. The process takes 5 minutes and any good that is done is completely passive after that.
Search Experience:
Overall, I’ve found that Ecosia is fine as a search engine. It generates rapid results and functions fairly well for basic needs.
Pros:
You’re planting trees with money that you don’t normally even think about!
Solid conversions between units
Solid word definitions (it doesn’t generate the rich snippet (that small box that presents before search results on google searches) but will display the preview from web pages)
Solid for calculations
Cons (aka some things that we’ve taken for granted with Google 😆):
No Google Translate/Google Maps (two functions that I personally use pretty frequently)
No stock search
Doesn’t provide rich snippets or answers at a glance
Difficulty with long-tail keywords
For example, if you’re going to look up, “What is H&M's stance on sustainability?” Ecosia will pull up results that range from open job positions to a few articles on H&M’s greenwashing and even an article about sustainable energy in the developing world. Google provides you with a direct answer, as well as the answers to several follow-up questions that you might have.
The Ecosia algorithm isn’t nearly as specific with its results and has difficulty understanding multiple words that are strung together.
Overall:
I’m happy that I switched to Ecosia. It passes for everyday search inquiries and while it can be a minor inconvenience if you’re looking for specific results and to troubleshoot technicalities, I think the social good of planting trees is a worthy tradeoff.
Worse comes to worst, you can always keep Google as your primary search engine on an alternate web browser. For example, I keep Google as the primary search engine on Safari, my secondary web browser, and when I really can’t find an answer on Ecosia (for work, usually), I’ll simply open a different browser and search through that.
Have you tried out Ecosia? What are your thoughts? If you’re interested in making the switch, you can learn more by visiting their info page here.