Search the Web, Plant a Tree, and Get Some Extra Privacy

Search the Web, Plant a Tree, and Get Some Extra Privacy

We just found a search engine that provides you with as much security and privacy as DuckDuckGo but goes a step beyond. When you search using Ecosia, you not only enhance your search privacy, you also plant trees. And who doesn’t love trees?

Well, you don’t plant the trees, Ecosia does — and they have reports to prove it. As of the day we discovered them, Ecosia had planted over 110 million trees. Even if you’re not a tree hugger, you have to admit that’s a heck of a lot of trees. And a lot of oxygen added to the atmosphere so we can breathe, not to mention the reducing CO2 levels.

You can easily add Ecosia to Chrome, Edge, and Firefox by visiting https://www.ecosia.org/ with your favorite browser and clicking…

Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox

But be careful… once you do this, your default search engine in your will be changed to Ecosia, but you can always change it back to Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, or whatever you like.

So, we suggest that you try Ecosia before you click the “Add to (name of your browser)” that you go to the https://www.ecosia.org page and type your search query in the search box. Try it out first and see if you like it. If you do, then you can click on the “Add to (name of your browser)” button.

We found the search results to be as good as (nearly the same as) DuckDuckGo, but not as good as Google. You must choose between efficacy and privacy, I guess.

Here’s the scoop on Ecosia from its developers:

Make Ecosia your new search engine and plant trees with your searches – for free!

We stand for a better internet

Completely transparent
We publish our monthly financial reports, so you see exactly where the income from your searches goes.

More than CO2 neutral
Our servers run on 200% renewable energy, and every search request removes 1kg of CO2 from the atmosphere.

Privacy friendly
We don’t sell your data to advertisers, have no third party trackers and anonymize all searches within one week.

We don’t store your searches permanently
We don’t create personal profiles of you based on your search history. We actually anonymize all searches within one week.

We don’t sell your data to advertisers
Many web services collect user data in order to sell it without asking your permission. We don’t sell your data or your searches to advertising companies.

Your searches are encrypted
We protect your searches from potential eavesdroppers with a securely encrypted connection. This way we make sure that nobody between you and us can see your searches.

We don’t use external tracking tools
Most websites use external tracking tools, like Google Analytics, to optimize their services. We don’t use such third party trackers, in order to prevent others from accessing your searches.
You can turn off all our tracking

We only collect a small amount of data to be able to improve our services. If you want to opt out of tracking, you can activate “Do Not Track” in your browser’s settings.

If search privacy is important to you, give Ecosia a try. It helps keep your searches random and private, and it helps to make the planet we all share, a better place.

Give Ecosia a try by going to https://www.ecosia.org/. If you like it you can easily add it to your browser and make it your browser’s default search engine.