Can't see the trees for the search engine forest

Fed up with Google ? Would you like a search engine that's not only trying not to be evil, but actually do good instead ? Perhaps Ecosia's worth checking out.

Founded by Christian in 2009, Ecosia makes its money in the same way as Google - from advertising revenues. It earns cash every time someone clicks on one of the adverts that appears above and beside its search results. Ecosia then donates 80% of the profits it makes from this to tree-planting charities. To date it has funded more than 105 million new trees, from Indonesia to Brazil, and Kenya to Haiti. As obviously not everyone clicks on the adverts, the company estimates that, on average, it takes 45 searches to raise the 0.22 euro (20p; 26 US cents) cost of planting of one tree.

And unlike the billionaire founders of Google - Larry Page and Sergey Brin - he promises to never buy a super yacht. "While they have big yachts I have an inflatable dinghy that I take to lakes. Ego consumption is not appropriate in a world where there's climate change." Christian would, in fact, struggle to buy a yacht if he ever wanted one, as he put two legally binding restrictions on the business - shareholders and staff cannot personally sell shares or take profits outside of the company. 

All of its electricity comes from solar power, and 80% of its users are said to be 29 or younger. Its search engine uses Microsoft's Bing's technology, with whom it has a long-term arrangement. "They really like what we are doing," says Christian.

It'd be tough indeed to demand any more of them, unless you insist that the entire staff be vegans who live in tree houses and survive on nothing but rainwater and dead leaves. Now, I'm not overly-fond of of Google, but I'm not exactly against them either. Would I prefer to use a search engine that plants trees for me ? Of course ! The question then becomes : is it any good ?

Let's try a few examples. Since Ecosia is powered by Microsoft, I suppose this is really testing Bing. But that's okay, since absolutely nobody - literally nobody at all - uses Bing anyway.


Search : fish
Google's first result is a selection of thumbnail images of fish, followed by the Wikipedia entry for fish, a map entry showing fish restaurants, some links to educational websites about fish, then a selection of YouTube videos. It's a pretty comprehensive take on the search term, if a bit cluttered. On the right there's a couple of snippets about the animal and something called the Friendly Interactive Shell.

Ecosia's page is a lot cleaner. Wikipedia appears as a snippet on the right, followed inexplicably by a snippet about Derek William Dick, whose stage name was fish. Never heard of him. In the main section, the first result is a fishing game, followed by a somewhat eclectic selection of fish-based links - some about actual fish, others about artists and games and suchlike. There's also a selection of news results.


Search : astronomy
Google gives me the Wikipedia entry as a featured snippet on the top, with a larger entry on the right and a selection of "people also searched for" results. The main section gives me a Q&A section, followed by a list of astronomy websites, interspersed with local results and news stories.

Ecosia gives me Astronomy Magazine in its right-side snippet. The main section is entirely links to astronomy websites, including some in Czech.


Search : philosophy
Ecosia gives the first result as philosophy.com, which, bizarrely, is a skincare products site. Google omits this. Other than that they're both about equal.


Searching for an address
I looked up my home address and the results were basically equivalent, except that Google comes up with Maps while Ecosia doesn't.


Calculations
Both gave the same results for simple addition and subtraction, multiplication and division. Ecosia assumes trigonometric calculations use degrees while Google prefers radians, though both allow you to just type in the units. Google comes up with an interactive calculator, Ecosia does not. Google also lets you do simple graphs, which Ecosia doesn't.


Image search
Google annoyingly creates a huge sidebar when you display and image, whereas Ecosia highlights the centre of the screen instead, which is a good deal less intrusive. Google (in Chrome) now needs an add-on to get the direct image link, whereas this is native to Ecosia.


Based on these quick field tests, there's not much to differentiate the two. I still like my Google homepage because I'd had it forever, and it provides ready access to gmail and the other services I still use, but I set my search bar engine to Ecosia. I'll try and develop the habit of using the search bar instead of going to the home page, if only for the sense of self-satisfaction that I've made a small contribution to planting some trees.

The search engine boss who wants to help us all plant trees

The BBC's weekly The Boss series profiles different business leaders from around the world. This week we speak to Christian Kroll, the founder and chief executive of internet search engine Ecosia. Christian Kroll wants nothing less than to change the world. "I want to make the world a greener, better place," he says.