So I found out about Ecosia a while ago and it's one of those things that just makes me really optimistic about humanity ~
Basically it's a search engine that uses the profits from search ads to plant trees by partnering with other organizations and initiatives around the world. Not only that, but they often choose projects that also help farmers in poor communities to earn more sustainable income and/or protect endangered species, and they are transparent about their finances.
They're also pretty privacy-centered like DuckDuckGo, which I've used for a long time, mostly to boycott Google.
Anyway, it's got me thinking about how we choose search engines. Obviously Google is the biggest. But do you ever use a different search engine? Why or why not? Do you find the performance differences between search engines to be significant, or marginal?
Personally I avoid Google because I don't like giant monopolies, targeted ads, or having my search results potentially closing me into an echo chamber. Of course it's practically impossible to avoid all of Google's products, but since a significant part of their revenue comes from search ads it's better than nothing ÂŻ_(ă)_/ÂŻ
That said I have to admit Google's image search is more intelligent than others. But I'm willing to give that up for the other benefits of alternative search engines (and I can always use Pinterest for finding images, which is even better)
What do you think?