![]() I’ll be honest, I know much less about these highly privacy focused search engines. SearchScene claims to donate 95% of revenue to charity, and the nice thing is that you get to ‘vote’ on which charities (currently form a list of six which are all well worth supporting) the revenue generated by your searches goes to. Bing also powers the search results, although they also mention adding something with their own algorithms. It’s similar to most of the others above, they make a selling point of having changing wallpaper like Bing which I find a bit distracting and don’t love at all to be honest. I’ve been aware of SearchScene for a while (since I wrote the first version of this post) but have never really used it much. Search results are powered by Bing, they claim to be privacy friendly and not to track you at all, and an extra bonus is that the source code for the site is open source and available on Github. They are not going to win any awards for the most catchy name but apart from that the search works and the results are clear, which is basically all anyone needs. The main difference is where the ad revenue gets spent, not trees or oceans this time, but Elliot for Water spend it on projects that work to improve access to clean drinking water worldwide. This is a new one to me, but is very similar in concept and search results to most of the others above. It looks like their search results are provided by Google. I’d love to tell you more, but Information is really pretty thin on the ground on their website. They don’t track searches, and claim to use 80% of profits to help clean up plastic from the ocean. They have a pretty logo, and very clean and easy to look at site design. I stumbled on Okeano while I was writing the first version of this article. Like Ecosia their search results are powered by Bing. If you are more passionate about cleaning up the oceans than you are about planting trees though, then Ekoru might just be the search engine for you. Personally I’m not a fan of their site design, it all feels a bit clunky and I don’t need spinning whales. ![]() In this case, they give 60% of all revenue to causes which ‘help save our oceans’. Named after the Maori symbol of creation, Ekoru is another search engine that doesn’t track your searches and gives money to environment related causes. Instead of giving everything to tree planing projects, Gexsi donates to a different cause every two weeks, with each one contributing towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The biggest difference is in where they spend money. Your search results will be a bit different because Gexsi pulls their results from both Bing and Google. ![]() Both are German B Corporations, both are great at privacy and transparent and accountable. What’s not to love? GexsiĮverything that is great about Ecosia is also great about Gexsi. Their search results are powered by Bing and Yahoo! but if you do need to consult the mighty Google then you can just add #g to the end of your search. They are also a certified B Corporation who spend their profits on planting trees, and regularly share updates on how and where they are doing it. The interface is clean, the search results are good, and they are privacy focused. I’m a big fan of Ecosia, it’s been my default search engine for a long time now. There are a few options if you want to not only have a search that’s powered by renewable energy but that donates money to sustainability causes at the same time… Ecosia So what are your other more ethical options? The ‘save the planet’ options That’s not bad at all but the others on this list go a bit further. Since 2017 Google has (according to their own reporting) been using 100% renewable energy to power their offices and data centres, making them the largest corporate purchaser of renewable power in the world. When it comes to the environment they actually do better. There are a lot of potential reasons not to love Google, massive privacy concerns, questionable hiring practices, or alleged tax avoidance for example, for most people it’s those privacy concerns. Nowadays though, it’s far from the only ethical search engine on the block and seem to be new options popping up all the time, and we decided to take a look at some of them.įirstly though, you might wonder why you would want an alternative search engine at all when the one that is the default on just about every device and browser you touch also happens to be the world’s biggest information repository? We’ve been using Ecosia, a search engine that plants trees with the profits it makes for a while now, I wrote a post here about it what feels like a very long time ago, and we are still using it, sometimes I drop into Qwant instead because they are one of the few alternatives with their own search index, but Ecosia is still the default on all of our devices. Originally written in mid 2020, and last updated in May 2022
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