Ecosia

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Ecosia GmbH
Website logo
Ecosia - the search engine that plants trees
Search engine
languages 47 (including variants)
Seat Berlin, Germany
operator Ecosia GmbH
editorial staff Christian Kroll
Registration not mandatory
Annual income € 19 million (2019)
On-line December 7, 2009 (currently active)
https://www.ecosia.org/

Ecosia is an ecological search engine based in Berlin . Both Ecosia's search results and search ads are served by Bing .

The operating company Ecosia GmbH , based in Berlin, had 70 employees including freelancers in early 2020 and describes itself as a social business . The company was founded in 2009. Alexa ranked 370 globally on November 28, 2019 and 54 in Germany. The Berlin company's 2019 turnover was 19 million euros.

Ecological goals

The company donates 80 percent of its surplus income to non-profit nature conservation organizations . Between 2010 and 2014, these surpluses went to The Nature Conservancy , which has set itself the goal of reforestation in the Mata Atlântica , the Atlantic rainforest of Brazil . Since October 2014, Ecosia has been donating to the WeForest “Greening the desert” project , which is planting trees in Burkina Faso . On February 13, 2019, Ecosia announced that it had planted 50 million trees. 100 million trees planted were announced on July 9, 2020.

In order to prevent sales and profit withdrawal, 99 percent of Ecosia's GmbH capital and one percent of the voting rights were transferred in October 2018 to the so-called special purpose foundation of the entrepreneur Armin Steueragel , which is based in Switzerland . The foundation has the right to veto all corporate decisions that would call into question the company's primary purpose.

history

Christian Kroll, 2019

The search engine was activated in December 2009 for the UN climate conference in Copenhagen . It is another project by Christian Kroll , who had already developed the three other "green" search engines OneCentPerSearch , znout and Forestle . Znout cooperates with Google and has set itself the goal of offsetting all of the CO 2 emissions caused by searching on znout by purchasing certificates for renewable energies. Forestle was also founded in cooperation with Google , but Google terminated the cooperation after a few days. According to its own information, at the time when Ecosia was still donating to the WWF, mathematically far more rainforest was protected per search query than at Forestle, since the reforestation projects of The Nature Conservancy cause higher costs. On January 1, 2011, Forestle was integrated into Ecosia as part of a relaunch. Since then, all search queries have been redirected. a. led to a surge in search queries at Ecosia.

In the German Firefox version 59, published in March 2018, Ecosia was added as a pre-installed search engine.

On October 9, 2018, the company caused a stir with a public purchase offer of € 1,000,000 made to the energy group RWE for the still existing part of the Hambach Forest , but RWE turned down an initial offer that evening.

In October 2017, the company planted around 15 million trees. On January 22, 2018, Ecosia announced that it had planted a total of 20 million trees. Ecosia reached 30 million trees on June 12, 2018, 40 million trees on October 18, 2018 and 50 million trees on February 13, 2019. In October 2019, Ecosia had financed over 70 million tree plantings. In July 2020, the 100 million tree mark was exceeded.

The social enterprise is a member of the Social Entrepreneurship Network Germany .

Functions

A personal counter is displayed to the right of each search query . Ecosia states that an average of 45 searches lead to a tree being planted (as of 2018). In the past, Ecosia and its browser plug-ins indicated the equivalent of saved rainforest (232,825,214 m², in December 2010) in addition to the amount of money donated. Ecosia says:

“In the first year, Ecosia supported a WWF Germany project with the protection of the Juruena National Park in the Amazon. In this nature park, five euros are necessary to maintain one hectare - a symbolic average value. Since the new version, which went online on December 14, 2010, Ecosia has been supporting an international WWF project in the Amazon - the Tumucumaque National Park. In the new project, it is not possible to associate the amount donated with a specific rainforest area. "

- Ecosia - questions and answers

Income and how it works

The search results were initially taken from the search engine Yahoo , later from Bing . Every time a sponsored link was clicked , Yahoo passed a portion of the revenue to Ecosia. The exact share could not be published for contractual reasons. Ecosia previously stated that an average of 0.13 cents would be donated to the rainforest for each search. This value resulted from the fact that approx. 2% of all search queries lead to an advertising link being clicked for which approx. 6.5 cents are donated. However, if Ecosia notices “fraudsters” who start spurious search queries or advertising clicks, these queries are filtered out. In 2019, around 0.5 cents were donated per search.

Ecosia also financed itself through the browser add-on “EcoLinks”, these are so-called affiliate links that were integrated into Ecosia's search results. This integration into the Ecosia search has been removed and instead outsourced to a separate add-on for Firefox and Chrome. This shows notifications as soon as a website of a supported online shop is visited and changes the links to such online shops. The operators of the online shops pay Ecosia a commission (usually between 2 and 5%) when someone comes to the shop via an EcoLink and buys something there or uses another offer that is eligible for commission (e.g. conclusion of a contract). 50% of the income surplus will be donated to the project supported by Ecosia, with the donation share being increased to up to 80%. The search results of the advertised companies will be highlighted when the add-on is installed and placed higher up in the search results, including in the search results of other search engines.

In 2013, the Treely browser add-on was integrated into EcoLinks, and Treely users have been redirected to the EcoLinks results since then. While EcoLinks cooperates with around 10,000 shops, the Treely project reached over 17,000 partner shops, which usually passed on 1–5% of the purchase value to the Ecosia Treely project; at least 70% of this went into The Nature Conservancy's rainforest project .

Spending and Conservation

According to its own information, Ecosia operates all servers with green electricity from Greenpeace Energy ; However, this does not apply to the actual search process on Bing's servers. Ecosia is therefore buying climate compensation certificates from myclimate , which invests the money in a project for climate compensation with Gold Standard in Madagascar. Ecosia previously bought certificates for climate compensation worth 0.2 grams of CO 2 from PURE - the Clean Planet Trust , which is also a gold standard project.

Ecosia displays the WeGreen sustainability traffic light behind the search results that have a WeGreen rating for the company in question.

Until December 2010, the aim of the donations was a protection program by WWF Germany for the Juruena National Park in the Amazon. Since the new version, which went online on December 14, 2010, Ecosia has been supporting a WWF project in the Amazon - the Tumucumaque National Park in the mountains of Guiana , Brazil. In order to maintain protection, protection plans are drawn up and financed with timber companies and the municipalities. In spring 2013, Ecosia announced that it would donate the species and improve the quality of its search results. Due to technical difficulties, however, a chargeable feed had to be used, and an Ecolink partner interrupted the cooperation with Ecosia. Due to the cost of the feed and the drop in income, Ecosia agreed with its partner WWF to limit the donation amount to 20,000 euros per month from November 2012 to February 2013.

Proven amount of money donated to the WWF in euros
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
January - 5,921.60 25,297.54 78,326.34 20,000.00
February - 7,393.96 18,697.32 57,728.46 20,000.00
March - 8,911.76 20,292.95 58,359.08 32,235.25
April - 9,135.11 17,430.41 62,000.34
May - 10,979.03 29,524.77 58,269.58
June - 10,678.19 20,144.90 56,091.67
July - 12,090.41 36,439.22 55,352.56
August - 11,523.77 45,790.29 54,551.61
September - 12,474.72 36,218.97 52,727.94
October - 13,300.17 43,651.22 50,114.48
November - 15,354.96 53,010.93 20,000.00
December 2,656.34 16,316.85 60,960.97 20,000.00
Total year 2,656.34 134,080.53 407,459.49 623,522.06 72,235.25
total 1,239,953.67

The operators of Ecosia state that by August 2013 they had donated almost 1.3 million euros to the WWF. At the end of August 2013, they separated from the WWF. From July 2013 to September 2014 Ecosia supported the “Plant a Billion Trees” project by The Nature Conservancy , a reforestation project in the Brazilian rainforest.

Amount of money donated to the TNC in euros according to Ecosia
2013 2014
January - 22,044.00
February - 44,089.00
March - 64,779.00 0($ 88,953)
April - 82,283.00 (112,301 USD)
May - 73,065.00 0($ 90,647)
June - 54,588.00 0($ 67,724)
July 440.00 69,849.00 0($ 86,658)
August 9,740.90 58,063.00 0($ 72,035)
September 52,170.90 48,409.00 0(61,145 USD)
October 53,859.14
November 58,059.00
December 62,106.00
Total year 236,375.94 521,688.00
total 758,063.94

In addition, Ecosia indicates the number of trees that can be planted with the respective monthly sum. In February 2014, 54,866 trees were planted for a donation of 44,089 euros. So around 80 euro cents have to be donated per tree. According to Ecosia, around 28 cents per tree have been donated since the end of January 2015.

In November 2014, Ecosia announced that it had planted a million trees. Ecosia has set itself the goal of planting a billion trees by 2020. At the end of January 2015, Ecosia announced that it would support another project in the Sahel region in Africa , with the donations already flowing there in October 2014. To this end, Ecosia works with WeForest and OZG . Since September 2014 only at least 80% of the surplus and no longer at least 80% of the total income is donated.

Ecosia income invested in trees
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
January - € 62,500 € 72,350 € 130,000 € 421,370 € 438,846 € 1,052,929
February - € 67,000 € 65,500 € 145,000 € 411,269 € 482,967 € 1,516,644
March - € 72,000 € 83,750 € 270,551 € 302,501 € 440,038 € 1,346,345
April - € 50,000 € 68,000 € 330,198 € 341,582 € 590,275 € 919,705
May - € 50,150 € 65,000 € 441,197 € 300,902 € 696,204 € 544,560
June - € 32,220 € 54,000 € 446,075 € 264,005 € 713,579 € 659,152
July - € 44,750 € 74,000 € 449,815 € 319,127 € 815,378 € 468,633
August - € 47,250 € 65,000 € 388,018 € 293,421 € 855,323
September - € 56,500 € 84,991 € 299,621 € 301,903 € 947,388
October 70,940.41 USD (approx. 56,000 €) € 63,700 € 102,900 € 303,949 € 215,012 € 992,325
November 45,255.60 USD (approx. 36,000 €) € 47,450 € 140,800 € 377,013 € 440,925 € 945,983
December € 40,000 € 62,450 € 137,000 € 470,215 € 533,080 € 1,281,721
Total year approx. € 132,000 € 655,970 € 1,013,291 € 4,051,652 € 4,145,097 € 8,253,994 € 6,507,968
Total € 24,759,972
Monthly donations from Ecosia
Ecosia has made monthly donations to tree planting projects since December 2009.

privacy

Ecosia's data protection is subject to German law. According to the current data protection declaration, the data will be deleted or anonymized after 7 days. In addition to the search queries and the retrieval date, the partner Bing, which provides the search results, is also informed of the IP address , browser and language setting.

Ecosia has been using the encrypted variant of HTTP , HTTPS, since September 2014 .

The apps for iOS and Android are less data-saving: There is no ad blocker and all cookies are accepted by default, Do Not Track is not activated.

criticism

While Ecosia's search mask is climate-compensated (Ecosia's own servers run on green electricity), this initially did not apply to the search technology used by Microsoft or Yahoo. Meanwhile, however, Microsoft runs its servers partly with renewable energies.

Awards

Web links

Commons : Ecosia  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Where do your search results come from? - Ecosia knowledge portal. In: ecosia.zendesk.com. Retrieved August 27, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Financial report and tree planting documents. In: ecosia.org. March 31, 2020, accessed April 27, 2020 .
  3. ↑ About Ecosia and the team. In: info.ecosia.org. Retrieved August 27, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Alexa - Ecosia Competitive Analysis, Marketing Mix and Traffic. In: alexa.com. Retrieved November 28, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Financial report and tree planting documents. October 27, 2019, accessed February 2, 2020 .
  6. ↑ October 2018 - Financial Reports. In: documents.ecosia.org. Archived from the original on May 18, 2019 ; accessed on August 27, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Ecosia. In: www.nature.org. Archived from the original on February 3, 2014 ; accessed on August 27, 2019 .
  8. ↑ a b 50! Millions! Trees! And how they changed the world. The Ecosia Blog DE, February 13, 2019, accessed on February 13, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Ecosia users have planted 100 million trees
  10. ↑ Hannes Koch: "I don't want to get rich" - taz.de. In: taz.de. October 8, 2018, accessed August 27, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Christian Erxleben: Ecosia: Why the green search engine becomes a foundation. In: basicthinking.de. October 5, 2018, accessed August 27, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Julia Otten: Eco-Search Engines: Greener than Google - taz.de. In: taz.de. February 7, 2010, accessed August 27, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Sabria Gundert: Search and donate - OneCentPerSearch makes it possible - Interview - Jetzt.de. In: Jetzt.de. July 15, 2008, accessed August 27, 2019 .
  14. ↑ How it works - Znout. In: znout.org. Archived from the original on February 27, 2009 ; accessed on August 27, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Hannes Vollmuth: Googling greener? In: fr.de. February 27, 2009, accessed August 27, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Jana Kroll: The number of search queries rose by 67% in January. In: ecosia.org. February 24, 2011, archived from the original on February 27, 2011 ; accessed on August 27, 2019 .
  17. ↑ Firefox 59.0, See All New Features, Updates and Fixes. In: mozilla.org. Accessed August 27, 2019 .
  18. ↑ Ecosia offers RWE € 1,000,000 for Hambach Forest. In: blog.ecosia.org. October 9, 2018, accessed on August 27, 2019 .
  19. ↑ Ecosia on Twitter: “RWE has officially rejected our offer. The company is confident that the court will soon allow them to clear the rest of the forest. We are currently negotiating a follow-up offer. Let's use the momentum together! # Hambibleibt… https://t.co/hw4hImLFYY “. In: twitter.com. October 9, 2018, accessed August 27, 2019 .
  20. ↑ Ecosia: 15 million trees planted! October 16, 2017. Retrieved October 16, 2017 .
  21. ↑ Ecosia: 20 million trees planted! January 22, 2018, accessed January 23, 2018 .
  22. ↑ 40,000,000 trees planted! In: The Ecosia Blog DE . October 18, 2018 ( ecosia.org [accessed October 18, 2018]).
  23. ↑ Ecosia - The search engine that plants trees. In: ecosia.org. Retrieved August 29, 2019 .
  24. ↑ Ecosia breaks 100 million trees planted. Retrieved July 13, 2020 .
  25. ↑ Network. In: send-ev.de. Retrieved August 29, 2019 .
  26. ↑ ecosia.org - old homepage from December 7, 2009 ( memento from December 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) on www.archive.org
  27. ↑ a b ecosia.org - Questions and Answers - Why can I no longer protect two square meters per search with Ecosia?
  28. ↑ Julia Otten: Protect green instead of google - taz.de. In: taz.de. February 8, 2010, accessed August 29, 2019 .
  29. ↑ Ecosia: Search engine wants to save rainforest. In: focus.de . December 5, 2009. Retrieved August 29, 2019 .
  30. ↑ Can I support Ecosia by clicking on advertising? - Ecosia knowledge portal. In: ecosia.zendesk.com. Retrieved August 29, 2019 .
  31. ↑ Ecosia against forest fires: How good is the search engine that plants trees? In: BILD newspaper. August 27, 2019. Retrieved August 29, 2019 .
  32. ↑ Ecosia FAQ , accessed April 18, 2015
  33. ↑ a b EcoLink FAQ ( Memento from May 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) FAQ, accessed on January 7, 2020
  34. ↑ EcoLink - Advertisers ( Memento of May 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on January 7, 2020
  35. ↑ Autumn cleaning: Forestle, Znout and Treely deactivated - Ecosia Blog ( Memento from August 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on January 7, 2020
  36. ↑ a b Treely: Protecting the Rainforest on the Web - ecosiawatch.org ( Memento from August 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on January 7, 2020
  37. ↑ ecosia.org - Questions and Answers - Do the Bing and Yahoo servers also run on green electricity?
  38. ↑ Ecosia - FAQ , accessed April 18, 2015
  39. ↑ ecosia.org - PURE certificate - Carbon offset ( Memento from July 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.1 MB) - Evidence for the paid CO 2 offset from August 2010 ( English ).
  40. ↑ Ecosia Blog ( Memento of August 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on August 14, 2014
  41. ↑ ecosia.org - Questions and Answers - Where does the money that Ecosia donates to the WWF go?
  42. ↑ WWF: Search engine saves rainforest - press release, December 3, 2009.
  43. ↑ ecosia blog
  44. ↑ Ecosia Payments (donation receipts) ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 2.1 MB) - Payment overview of receipts and donations to the WWF @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / docs.google.com
  45. ↑ a b c d e - Donation Statements - Donation information to the TNC and WeForest
  46. ↑ a b Ecosia Blog ( Memento from April 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on April 18, 2015
  47. ↑ a b Ecosia Blog ( Memento of November 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on April 18, 2015
  48. ↑ Ecosia Annual Report for December 2014 , accessed on April 18, 2015
  49. ↑ Financial report and tree planting documents. In: blog.ecosia.org. Retrieved April 19, 2020 .
  50. ↑ Ecosia's privacy policy. Retrieved June 19, 2019 .
  51. ↑ Ecosia Blog ( Memento of April 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on April 18, 2015
  52. ↑ Miriam Ruhenstroth: A brief introduction to the Ecosia search engine. In: mobilsicherheit.de. September 8, 2019, accessed August 29, 2020 .
  53. ↑ Renewable Energy | Microsoft Environment. Retrieved January 24, 2017 (American English).
  54. ↑ Utopia Foundation ( Memento from January 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive ): Utopia Awards 2009 - The winners have been announced!
  55. ↑ ecosia.org - Cebit: The federal government honors Ecosia with two prizes , Jana Kroll in the Ecosia Blog, March 4, 2011
  56. ↑ BMWi : Prize winners of round 1/2010> Prize winners,> Winners of the special prize , start-up competition - start successfully with multimedia
  57. ↑ BMWi : State Secretary Otto honors winners in the “Start-up competition - IKT innovativ” at CeBIT ( Memento from March 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), press release from March 4, 2011
  58. ↑ Ministry of Agriculture and Environment of the State of Saxony-Anhalt : Prize of the Environmental Alliance Saxony-Anhalt 2010 - Category Most Sustainable Product Development ( Memento from January 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 47 kB)
  59. ↑ Ministry of Agriculture and Environment of the State of Saxony-Anhalt : Prize of the Environmental Alliance Saxony-Anhalt 2010 ( Memento from January 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 504 kB), in Environmental Alliance Saxony-Anhalt - current page 3, 4th edition , March 2011.
  60. ↑ ecosia.org - Ecosia wins the KarmaKonsum Founder Award 2011 ( Memento from June 15, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), Jana Kroll in the Ecosia Blog, June 11, 2011
  61. ↑ EY Public Value Award 2018. In: www.eypva.com. Retrieved October 25, 2019 .
  62. ↑ Stiftung Warentest tests search engines: Google only makes it to second place. In: Chip.de. March 26, 2019. Retrieved August 29, 2019 .