Ecosia Blog

There have been a couple attempts to do this previously. In India, there was one version used as a physical barrier on a customs line for 450 miles. Also happened to improve the area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Customs_Line#Great_Hedge

https://amocarroll.com/projects/tracing-the-great-salt-hedge

China has the China's Three-North Shelterbelt Program where they're trying to hold back the desert in North China and Inner Mongollia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Three-North_Shelter_Forest_Program

Based on reports, it has issues with tree survival, yet seems to be making progress based on aerial surveys.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259033221930274X

There's also an attempt in Africa in the Sahara that a bunch of countries signed on to. Unfortunately, their commitments have mostly amounted to talk without much funding or governmental support. Seen a few videos of locals who seems to believe in the idea, its just not getting much large scale help.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(Africa)

I also use Ecosia (https://www.ecosia.org/) as a web browser, and they supposedly plant trees based on number of searches and a percent diversion of search revenue. Seems to at least have some photographic evidence of money actually being spent somewhere.

Senegal's an example with desert work. Seems to have evidence that at least some amount of trees are being planted with videos (harder to…

Regarding Startpage: https://www.startpage.com/privacy-please/startpage-articles/startpage-and-privacy-one-group

https://web.archive.org/web/20210729190016/https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/1275/0/what-is-startpages-relationship-with-privacy-onesystem1-and-what-does-this-mean-for-my-privacy-protections

The original link is dead for some reason: https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/1275/0/what-is-startpages-relationship-with-privacy-onesystem1-and-what-does-this-mean-for-my-privacy-protections

TL;DR: Startpage appears owned by an ad company? https://web.archive.org/web/https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2017/09/20/system1-raises-270-million-for-consumer-intent.html

Could someone explain to me how an ad company and a privacy company work together? Seems like opposing interests?

Maybe Ecosia will be a good alternative later on: https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/

Another suggestion would be https://searx.space/

Ecosia and Qwant have just started collaborating on EUSP (European Search Perspective)[1]

This could easily yield very interesting (i.e. "not just another bing proxy") results once it starts gaining traction.

I use DuckDuckGo at the moment, only because Startpage started making themselves impossible to use when they started aggressively blocking access via VPNs. As other people have already said,see `noai.duckduckgo.com` and `lite.duckduckgo.com` which might address your specific concerns.

If you are a Mullvad user, there is also Mullvad Leta[2], which has been security audited[3].

I might shift more towards Ecosia/Qwant.

[1] https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp-germany-rollout/
[2] https://mullvad.net/en/blog/introducing-mullvad-leta-a-search-engine-used-in-the-mullvad-browser
[3] https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/16/security-audit-of-our-letamullvadnet-search-service

Does anybody know if/how Ecosia tackles long-term viability of their trees?

Edit: From their site: "Of course, not all trees survive; that never happens. Ecosia therefore only counts trees that will survive for more than three years – a time when they’re robust enough to face most natural threats.

For instance, if we plant 1000 trees and know from experience that the mortality rate in this area is 25%, we’ll only add 750 trees to our tree counter. We continually measure the survival rate of the trees we plant, through inventories and satellite technology, and adjust our tree counter accordingly."

(https://blog.ecosia.org/how-do-ecosia-trees-survive-cut-down/)

> an unknown percentage

Do like one or two google searches and you'll see a monthly transparency report. (https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree-planting-receipts/)

Spend another five minutes doing research and it feels like Ecosia goes above and beyond to make their purpose pretty legitimized. E.g. the company is a certified b-corporation. The founders donated their ownership of the company back to the share. (https://blog.ecosia.org/trees-not-profits/)

Sure, google has done a great job building the ecosystem. But Ecosia doesn't appear to deserve the skepticism I see here in the comments.

I linked this a different comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ld0EDDQZg4& This is our tree planting officer explaining (among other things) how he tries to make sure we plant in the right places (and that includes land ownership questions and how to make sure the tress will still be around in a few years).
As for energy consumption, we do offset the CO2 emissions that are associated with searching on Ecosia by running our own solar power plant. Here is some more information on this on our blog: https://blog.ecosia.org/co2-neutral-seach-engine-ecosia-solar-plant/